Yeah, My Best Friend Is A Dragon, So What?
by Lauraeffingiero
Summary: CHAPTER 12 IS UP! Jane is recovering from her second failed attempt at babysitting, and she thinks perhaps some mushy-type feelings are developing towards her fellow squire... J/G Please read and review!
1. The Legendary Redhead Temper

**Disclaimer:** I do not, unfortunately, own Jane and the Dragon or any of its characters, but I am writing about them anyway. Please don't sue me, because I don't have any money. Well, except maybe about twenty-five dollars, but I'm planning to blow that on makeup later this week.

Now updated!

* * *

"Gunther, you biscuit weevil! Have you never heard of fighting fair?"

"Perhaps. I think I have heard the term before, mayhap I read it in a book… what does it mean?"

"Do not smirk at me like that! You know exactly what I am talking about!"

It was sparring time in the practice yard. This meant that, as usual, Gunther and I were hurling insults at each other, the sound of wood hitting wood punctuating every word.

And, as usual, Gunther was cheating.

And, because of this cheating, he was winning.

…Once again, as usual.

"Ha! Beat you again!" Gunter exclaimed as he knocked me to the ground.

I brushed the dust off my leggings and stood, ignoring the slight pain in the leg I had landed on. "Because you cheated!" I said hotly. "Perhaps if you were following the rules, then I could actually beat you –"

"Jane, do not be ridiculous. Do you think, in a battle, that anyone would care who is playing fair?" Gunther snorted, leaning on his practice sword.

"Fine! I will cheat too, and we will see who wins!" I exclaimed, knowing just what Sir Theodore would have to say to this idea, but so irritated after spending the entire day with Gunther that I no longer cared.

We raised our wooden swords once more and began circling, little puffs of dust rising each time our feet hit the ground.

"I bet the first real fight you are in, your opponent will knock you down on the first blow," he taunted.

I gritted my teeth. "Please do not talk."

"Why? Does it distract you? Is it challenging for you to spar and talk at the –"

"No, it is your breath – I can smell it from over here," I snarled. It was a lie, but nevertheless it made Gunther swipe at me in exactly the way I wanted him to. Swinging my sword forward, I smacked his out of his hands and then placed the wooden tip against his throat, feeling supremely satisfied with myself.

"Dead," I said triumphantly, lowering my sword.

"Congratulations," Gunther spat. "Unfortunate, however, that in a real battle you would have died eight times before managing to kill me."

"Do not be a sore loser, Gunther," I said absently, wiping the sticky mixture of sweat and dust off my forehead. "I was not."

We both lifted our swords and headed to store them in the weapons shed, passing Dragon where he lounged on the castle wall.

"How was practice?" he called, opening one fiery orange eye to look down at us.

"Decent," I said, ignoring Gunther's snicker from in front of me. "How was your nap?"

"_Was_? Who says it is over yet?" He closed his eye and resumed snoring.

I grinned and shook my head, sticking my practice sword in the shed next to Gunther's.

"Maybe you should practice more, Jane," Gunther said, gesturing to the dummy. "We would not want you to die eight times in real battle, would we? "

I scowled at him, but removed my sword again and started to the dummy anyway.

"Maybe you should be less of a beef-brain, Gunther, and people would actually like you," I grumbled, smashing my sword into the dummy with a bit more force than a cloth figure really warranted.

"I heard that!" Gunther yelled.

"Good!" I shouted back, striking the dummy as hard as I could, again and again, until I was drenched with sweat and bits of fluff were coming out of the holes I had made.

...

"Oh, good. Supper. I am starving," I said, pulling the platter of fish towards me and scooping some onto my plate.

"We heard you at the dummy, today, Jane," Jester said, his mouth full of herring.

"Jester, would you please swallow your food before opening your mouth?" Pepper reproved lightly, shivering a little in the autumn breeze as she poured water for everyone.

"Yes, _please_," I smiled.

Jester swallowed very exaggeratedly before beginning to speak again. "Anyway, Jane, we heard you attacking that poor dummy. What were you so angry about?"

"Gunther was being aggravating, as always."

"Ah, Gunther," Jester said, as if that in itself were answer enough.

"What did he do?" Smithy asked, picking a tiny bone out of his fish and placing it on his napkin.

I shrugged. "He was cheating. He always wins."

"Hmm."

We returned to our food, and only when the plates were empty did the conversation resume.

"You should have unleashed the legendary redhead temper on him," Jester said, his hat jingling as he turned to look at me, his eyebrows waggling comically.

"And what exactly is this 'legendary redhead…' thing?" I asked dubiously as Pepper stacked the plates expertly and whisked them away.

"Do you not know what your red hair means?" he asked, his head tilted to the side, a smile quirking his lips.

I pinched a red lock between my thumb and forefinger, glancing from it to Jester. "No…"

"Well…" Jester leapt off the bench and gestured to me with an overdone flourish. "It means your head is on fire, of course."

I snorted, as did Rake and Smithy.

"It is true, fair lady! And, one day," Jester said, glancing at Rake, Smithy and I, leaning forward, and saying in an elaborate whisper, "It will get so hot it will _explode_."

"My head is going to explode?" I asked skeptically.

"Absolutely. And when it does, you get so mad about your head being exploded that you go out and kill whomever you are most angry with at that moment – so, _bam_, problem solved. No more Gunther," Jester said with a grin, crossing his arms.

"Huh."

"I swear it is true, Jane."

I snorted again. "Oh yes."

Jester shook his head, plopping down on the bench once more as Pepper brought out pastries for dessert. "You just do not have enough faith, Jane. Perhaps if you were more willing to believe…"

"Perhaps if I were more gullible…" I interrupted, finishing my pastry in three bites and licking the syrupy sugar off my fingers.

"Gullible could work as well," Jester grinned.

I shook my head at him, amused, before rising from the table with a yawn. "I think I will head up to bed. Fighting Gunther is such an ordeal."

Trudging up the stairs to my tower, I felt as if someone had placed lead weights in my shoes when my attention was elsewhere – how else could my feet possibly move so slowly? When I reached my door, I barely had the strength to push the heavy slab of wood open. I fell into bed without changing out of my clothes, my eyes instantly closing.

Despite my exhaustion, I had trouble falling asleep – I was thinking about how it was simply not fair that Gunther was stronger than me just because he was a boy and I was not.


	2. This Chapter’s Title Is Too Long To Fit!

**Disclaimer:** Once again, I don't own Jane and the Dragon (or any of its characters) so please don't sue me, blah, blah, blah.

** Notes:** Thanks to Miss-Uncreative for her advice on contractions :)

(The contraction thing has actually occurred to me before, I am just ridiculously lazy with my writing - so lazy that I won't even change the writing style to make the story better! I am, however, trying to work on that, (hurrah for self-improvement!) so I think the dialogue should be more realistic in this chapter.)

Also, here's something I forgot to put at the beginning of the first chapter: this story takes place about two years after the show - or, rather, since the show takes place in the spring/summer, it takes place in the fall/winter a year after the show ends... so if you can make sense of my muddled logic, about a year a half later. Jane has just turned fourteen - Gunther will turn sixteen in several months. You probably didn't need to know any of that, so this is a waste of space, but whatever!

Also also, my chapter titles are too long to fit in the bar (and I simply refuse to cut them down and lose their awesomeness - I am quite proud of my titles... I like to think that they are clever) so I will from now on simply put them above the beginning of the chapter.

* * *

Chapter 2.

Why Would You Let Us Take Care of Children After What Happened Last Time?

* * *

It must be hard, being a dragon. You constantly have to watch your strength in order not to injure people on accident. And you always outlive your human  
companions.

However, it is much, _much_ harder being the best friend of one.

"Jane! Jane! Jane, get up!"

"Go away, Dragon," I mumbled, shifting in my bed so I faced away from the gigantic green head that was talking to me.

"Jane, get up! Let's go fly!"

I sat up and glared at him. "Dragon, I want to sleep. The sun has not even finished rising yet."

"Exactly! The sky is magnificent!"

"Why don't _you_ go watch the sunrise, and then tell me what it looked like in two or three hours, when it is actually a reasonable time to get up?" I burrowed  
back beneath my blankets, ignoring the sound of Dragon's whining. He would stop eventually. He always did.

As usual, I was right. I started to drift off once he fell silent, but he ruined it by speaking again.

"What is Sir Rustylegs up to?"

"Hmm? Sir Theodore? Is he doing something?" I asked, sitting up and walking to the window. Dragon moved his scaly head so I could look outside, where I saw Theodore saddling multiple horses with Smithy's assistance.

"I do not know what he is doing. Maybe the King and Queen are planning a journey?" I wondered, sticking my head out the window to see better.

"Huh. Well, now that you are up, what about a little flight?"

I shook my head at Dragon and laughed. "You absolutely will never give up, will you?"

He grinned, showing off his mouth of huge teeth. "Dragons _never_ give up."

"Fine then. Just let me put my shoes on."

_________

"You wanted to see me, Sir?"

"Yes, Jane," Sir Theodore said, gesturing at Gunther to join us – we were standing in the throne room, looking at a map of the surrounding kingdoms. "The King and Queen are leaving to negotiate some matters with Limeer. Your parents and Sir Ivon and I are also going. The King asked that you watch after the Royal children."

I felt my eyes widen, and next to me, Gunther snorted. "Sir," I said, "I would think that, after last time –"

Theodore lifted his hand, and I fell silent.

"This time, Jane, Gunther will assist you." He gave the wide-eyed Gunther a stern look. "This time, there is also no 'test,' so I expect you will not be studying instead of watching the Prince and Princess."

"Of course, Sir, but –"

"Jane, this was the King's word. Would you disobey your King?" Theodore raised his eyebrows, and when I didn't reply, he smiled. "Good. We will return by nightfall tomorrow."

"_Tomorrow_? But, Sir, I do not know if –"

"I am faithful you will not fail, squires. The Queen will give you instructions on what she expects when she returns. Good day."

Theodore turned and walked away, leaving Gunther and I standing there, disbelief coloring our faces.

"I must be dreaming," Gunther said, his voice horrified. "Pinch me."

"Gladly." I reached forward and pinched his arm, but he didn't even flinch, just continued staring after Theodore.

"Come on," I said finally. "Let's go ask the Queen what our duties are."

__________

"– and Lavinia needs a bath before she goes to bed, but the maid will take care of that."

I nodded.

"I believe that is everything. I am sure you will do wonderfully, Jane," the Queen said, smiling serenely.

"I will not fail you, Majesty," I said, bowing as she mounted her horse. Gunther bowed as well, and we watched as all the reasonable-minded adults, plus Jester, crossed the drawbridge and rode off into the morning mist.

A thud behind us announced Dragon, but neither Gunther or I looked away from the place where the mist had swallowed the group.

"What's going on?" Dragon asked, burping a stream of orange fire – he had just finished eating all Rake's rotten vegetables.

"Well, the knights, the King and Queen, and my parents have just left on a trip to another kingdom," I said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. "And Gunther and I are to care for the Prince and Princess until they return tomorrow."

"That sounds familiar. Didn't this same thing happen a year or two ago and it ended in disaster?" Dragon said, looking out past the drawbridge, where he could probably still see them through the mist.

"It is not quite the same. Sir Ivon is not here this time. And it was only half a day before."

"Hmm," Dragon said, almost thoughtfully. "Remind me to completely avoid this castle for the next day and a half."

In the silence that followed, Gunther turned and headed towards the castle doors.

"Where are you going?" I called after him.

"To say goodbye to the Royal children, of course," he said, his voice grim.

"Why?"

Gunther turned to face me, one of his perfect black eyebrows raised. "Do you really think that they are going to make it through the night?"


	3. The Woes of the Babysitter

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Jane and the Dragon. Duh. I'm obviously not Martin Baynton.  
(He probably wouldn't waste hours of his time writing low-quality fan fiction)

**Notes:** This chapter is ridiculously short. Sorry about that. But the next one is pretty long, so it should make up for it.

Thanks once again to Miss-Uncreative (and to everyone who reviewed - and thanks to SunRise19 for her comment on the finishing line of chapter two - I thought it was a much better end than chapter one) and, I have to say, I am profusely sorry about the double negative. I absolutely cannot believe that I am so awful at editing that I didn't notice it! And a _double negative_, of all things! I mean, I hate them more than any other grammar mistake _ever_ - if you want to look like a stupid idiot, use a double negative. Or say "ain't."

Anyway, though, on with Chapter Three. (This chapter's title actually fit on the bar - I know, surprising - so I won't put it below)

* * *

I sighed and shook my head. "No, Your Majesty. You cannot tie Gunter to the throne."

Gunther smirked down at the Prince. "Ha."

I scowled at him.

It was only midday (though it felt as if it had been years, at least, since the King and Queen had left) and we were sitting at the table inside the kitchen, as Pepper had decided the Prince and Princess could just eat the midday meal with us instead of inside the banquet hall. Wisely, Smithy and Rake had said they had simply too many swords to sharpen and too many bushes to trim to possibly have time to eat, so it was only Gunther, Pepper, and I.

"What about hide-and-seek? Can we play hide-and-seek? And I can hide on the roof!"

And the Prince and Princess, of course.

"There will be absolutely no going on the roof!" I exclaimed; grabbing the knife that Lavinia was waving around before she could poke someone's eye out.

Both the Royal Children opened their mouths to ask another question about something dangerous or ill advised that they could do, but I shook my head again. "Before you ask me, let me tell you that nothing, and I repeat, nothing, that happened before will happen this time. No throne-tying. No crown-snatching. No name-calling. No roof. No dungeons. So do not even ask," I said firmly, placing the knife back in its spot next to Lavinia's plate.

"What are we supposed to do, then?" the Prince asked, his face crinkling in a frown.

"I am sure we will think of something," I murmured, frowning also. What exactly _were_ we going to do?

Pepper set soup before us and the Prince immediately began slurping it – the speed at which his spoon moved meant that the two people sitting next to him were splattered with flecks of creamy tomato.

Fortunately for me, I was sitting across from him. Gunther, however, was not so fortunate.

I giggled.

Gunther glowered at me before taking his napkin and wiping discreetly at the tomato on his tunic.

I giggled again.

Lavinia, who was on Cuthbert's other side, did not seem to notice or mind the tomato and so continued eating and humming absently.

I dipped my spoon into my own soup and ate quietly, though occasionally I could not help a smile at Gunther's facial expressions as he was repeatedly speckled with soup.

Pepper chattered on through our silence, bustling back and forth for rolls, butter, a little more salt; perhaps the soup could use some?

Once the Prince was done eating, he looked up at me again. "What about a battle? Can we have a battle?"

I narrowed my eyes. "What sort of battle?" I asked guardedly.

"A real one! With horses! And armor! And swords!" he blurted excitedly.

"No," I said, finishing my soup and laying down my spoon. "But you can fight Gunther or me with one of the wooden practice swords, if you want."

"Champion! Come, Gunther!" he said, leaping to his feet and yanking on Gunther's sleeve.

Gunther rose, giving me such a death glare that I burst into laughter.

"We will watch," I informed him with a grin, taking Lavinia's hand and trailing along behind the overenthusiastic Prince.

When we reached the practice yard, Cuthbert already had one of the swords clasped in his hands and was brandishing it threateningly at Gunther.

"I challenge you, Sir Gunther, to a duel!" he yelled. "Have at thee, coward!"

Gunther grabbed the other sword and blocked the shaky blow the Prince had dealt him. He glanced at me over Cuthbert's head, his brow furrowed, and mouthed, "What do I do?"

"Let him win," I mouthed back as he moved over a foot so that Cuthbert, who had charged towards him, missed completely.

Gunther nodded, and when Cuthbert jabbed forward with his sword, Gunther let it hit him in the knee, and fell over with a dramatic thud.

"You have won, Majesty," Gunther said, bowing his head as the Prince approached him, his wooden sword dragging on the ground. "You are the best knight this kingdom has ever seen."

"Indeed. Now pledge your loyalty to me!" Cuthbert proclaimed, dropping his sword.

"I, Squire Gunther, pledge –"

"This is getting boring. What else can we do?" the Prince interrupted, turning towards me.

I glanced up at the sun, the light of which was watered down by the clouds surrounding it. "Well, right now it is time for the Princess to have a nap, and for you to have a lesson with your tutor."

My words were met with childish scowls.

"May I stay up just a little bit longer?" the Princess begged, biting her lip.

I smiled apologetically. "No, Princess – I am sorry, but it is your naptime."

Both the children sighed and trudged up the castle steps. Gunther and I followed behind, our steps even slower.

"What I want to know," Gunther muttered, "is when is it _our_ naptime?"

I let out a tired laugh.


	4. This Title Won't Fit Either!

**Disclaimer:** Guess what? I don't own Jane and the Dragon, that's what!

**Notes: **First off, thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who reviewed! I loooooove reviews!

Second of all, this is sort of a filler chapter. Not too much actually happens - at least I think so.

Lastly: personally, I think Jane is sort of out of character in this chapter. I'm not really sure why this is, but whatever! Maybe she's just on her period and is overly emotional, or something. Anyway, if that bothers you, sorry. She should be back to normal next chapter.

* * *

Chapter 4.

Boys – The More You Try to Understand Them, the Less Sense They Make

* * *

"…and they lived happily ever after," I finished, closing the book I had been reading from and blowing out the candle next to Lavinia's bed.

"I want another one!" the Princess demanded, her lip pushed out in a petulant pout.

"I am sorry, Your Little Majesty, but you have to go to bed now. I will be back to wake you up in an hour." I closed the door behind me and sighed. The bench down the hallway from Lavinia's room looked so appealing (no matter that it was cold hard stone) that I slumped on it and rubbed my temples with tired fingers.

"How many stories did you read her?"

I started, glancing up to see Gunther leaning against the wall across from the bench, his face buried in shadow.

"Perhaps five," I replied, leaning my head back against the cool stone and sighing again. "How is the Prince? Does he like his lessons?"

Gunther shrugged placidly, coming forward into the light. "He hates them and thinks his tutor is a smelly donkey."

I snorted. "Not really surprising, I suppose."

Gunther sat next to me and I shifted to make room for him. We sat in silence for a minute before I stood reluctantly.

"We should probably go practice staves," I murmured.

Gunther stood also. "Yes, we should. And then I need to get bedding for tonight."

"Bedding? What for?" I wondered, frowning in confusion.

"Well, I will be staying the night at the castle," he said, his voice hinting at the obviousness of it. "I mean, I cannot help take care of the Prince and Princess from the village, can I?"

"I – I… I guess I just did not think about it," I said, slightly bewildered that this hadn't occurred to me. I had just supposed that Gunther would leave at nightfall, as he always did, and that I would beg Pepper to assist me in putting the children to bed. I didn't ever think he would actually be… responsible.

"Where will you sleep?" I asked, following Gunther as he headed down the stairs. There were multiple extra rooms in the castle, but they most likely had not been cleaned for years and would take hours to warm, especially in the cold October weather.

He shrugged. "I think in the Prince's room, on the floor. I am sure he would not mind. Then he could have someone to order around for hours longer than normal."

"Huh," I replied, and then blushed at how foolish and dimwitted I sounded. Luckily, Gunther was ahead of me on the stairs and so did not see the pink smeared across my cheeks. "I mean, that makes sense," I amended. "But it would mean the Princess would want someone to sleep in her room also."

"So you can sleep in her room," Gunther answered, as if this were all the simplest thing in the world.

"But – I – I…"

"You like her well enough, do you not?"

"Yes, of course, but…" what I wanted to say caught in my throat, for I knew how foolish it would sound to Gunther. _But night is the only time I am alone_, I wanted to tell him. _I love my friends, and I love sparring, and I love flying with Dragon, but it is the only time I have all to myself where I can simply relax. No focusing on patrol, or what my friends are saying, or the wooden sword coming dangerously close to meeting my skin. _

We reached the end of the stairs and Gunther stopped and turned to me. There was something about that, him standing on the level ground and me on the last stair, his smoky gray eyes looking up into mine, that seemed like it meant something.

"I know it is the only free time we have, but it is only one night, right?" he reasoned.

I considered how wrong that was, Gunther reasoning with me, instead of the other way around, even as I found myself nodding.

"Yes, of course, I know. It is just…"

Gunther smiled at me before turning and beginning to walk again. "Yes. I know."

Some strange sense of relief swooped through me at the thought that even as muddled as I had sounded, Gunther had understood. Even odder though, was the way the feeling lingered on my cheeks and in my stomach, leaving a peculiar warmth.

__________

"Jane?"

"Hmm?" I said, glancing up from the bread I was kneading. Pepper flicked a dough-covered finger at a dark strand of hair dangling in her face and spoke once more.

"Should you get the Little Majesties soon?"

I began kneading again. "Yes, soon. Once I finish this bread –"

"Oh, no, no no! You need not stay to help me when you have other duties! I can finish it just fine." She wiped her hands on her apron and patted my shoulder. "Go collect them, and I will have a nice supper made up for you in a hour or two."

I wiped my hands also and bit my lip. "Pepper, I really should be helping you more –"

"I can manage," she said firmly, giving me a small push towards the kitchen door. "Out you go."

I sighed and left, glancing about for Gunther – his bout of responsibility had been brief, as the second we finished staves and I suggested some kitchen work, he was nowhere to be found. It was actually reassuring in an annoying way, as his not being a biscuit weevil was a bit discomfiting. However, he had been ordered to help me with the Majesties, and I expected him to uphold that. And if he was going to help me, he had to actually _be_ with me, so…

"Gunther?"

I called once more, but got no reply. Sighing again, I kicked at a lumpy gray rock on the ground. The thought hit me that it was the same color as Gunther's eyes – that swirled, washed out black. I kicked the rock harder, sending it skittering across the ground and smashing into the stone wall with an overly dramatic sound for such a tiny thing. Looking around, I felt strangely nervous that someone had seen my unexplainable and sudden anger, but Rake was in the upper gardens, Smithy was in his forge, and Dragon had made good on his earlier words and completely avoided the castle.

I leaned down and picked up the gray rock from where it lay, examining it. It was not worthy of such inspection, as it was exactly what it had appeared from far away – a gray, misshapen lump of ordinary stone. Abruptly angry at how unremarkable the pebble was (what had I been expecting? For it to become a diamond if only I looked closer?) I pulled my arm back and flung it with all my strength, hoping to make it over the wall so as to get the pathetic stone as far away from me as possible.

It fell with a clatter on the stairs into my tower.

"Stupid rock," I grumbled.

"You are throwing wrong," a voice said, sounding from behind me.

I whirled around, my hand automatically reaching for the sword at my side – which was not there, of course. I never carried my sword with me around the castle.

"You are throwing wrong," Gunther repeated, stepping forward, his footsteps quiet on the swept stone.

"I throw fine," I snarled, crossing my arms.

He shook his head, his black hair shifting with the movement. "No. You throw wrong and you have awful aim." He bent and grabbed a rock before coming to stand next to me. I immediately took a step back, away from him.

He did not appear to notice, just gestured up to the castle wall with his left hand, the rock clasped loosely in his right. "See, to make it over the wall, you have to angle your wrist up. If you point it downwards, as you did, it will never make it high enough." He swept his arm forward in a single fluid movement, and the rock went flying over the wall with feet to spare.

I scowled at the wall, at Gunther, and then at the pebbles still on the ground.

"Here," Gunther said, pressing a cool stone into my hand with warm callused fingers. "You try."

I wanted to refuse, wanted to drop the rock and run away, like a sullen child, but as Gunther's eyes met mine, I realized he was being… not entirely unkind, for once, and that it would be simply rude for me to push him away.

"What was it that you said about my wrist?" I asked.

"That it should be angled upwards," Gunther said, taking my wrist in gentle fingers and bending it up. "And your arm…" he repositioned my arm also, the calluses on his hands almost abrasive on my skin, "should be like this. Alright – throw."

I felt the weight of the stone in my hand, now warmed from contact with my skin, and let my arm spring forward. I was sure that it did not look nearly so fluid as it had when Gunther had thrown, but the rock still cleared the wall and made a small 'thud' on the other side as it connected with the ground.

"See?" Gunther smiled. "You can make it if you throw correctly."

I thought of all the insults I could reply with, but instead simply smiled back. "Thank you."

"It is nothing," he answered, gripping one last stone in his hand before throwing it; it flew so far over the wall that a splash could be heard when it entered the river on the other side.

"Is it time to go get the Prince from his lesson and the Princess from her nap?" he asked, pulling my gaze from where the rock had passed over the wall.

"Yes," I responded. "I believe it is."


	5. Neither Will This One!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Jane and the Dragon. Neither do you. Unless if you're Martin Baynton, which is unlikely.

**Notes:** About the reviews: thank you for all the reviews, and keep 'em coming. Please. You would not even believe how pathetic I am about my reviews; when there's a new one I dance around the house and freak out my cat, Scout - he deserves it, though, because he always comes and sits on my hands when I try to type, which is, needless to say, ridiculously annoying.

Also, about the last chapter, I wasn't very clear about the 'out of character' thing. Gunther was intentionally written out of character. He was supposed to be acting sort of strangely - enough to seem unlike his usual self and to confuse Jane. So, sorry about that! I forgot to mention it at the beginning of the last chapter.

* * *

Chapter 5.

Children - You Love Them or You Hate Them

* * *

"Princess? It is time to wake up," I called lightly, pushing open the heavy wooden door leading into Lavinia's room and making my way to her bed, taking care to skirt around the scattered toys on the floor. While tripping was part of the reason I treaded so lightly, it was mostly because I did not want to break anything – in Lavinia's eyes, wrecking one of her treasured playthings was equivalent to murder.

"Princess?" I said again, leaning down and pulling aside the curtain around her bed before smiling at what an adorable sight she made.

She was curled around her favorite stuffed rabbit, her braid loosed from its knot by the tosses and turns of sleep. I brushed a wisp of black hair off her forehead and tapped her shoulder gently. "Your Little Majesty, it is time to get up," I murmured when she shifted, her eyes opening the tiniest bit to reveal the warm brown of her irises.

"Okay," she mumbled, rising from her bed and scrubbing the heel of her palm against her eye while still clutching her rabbit in the other hand. I silently fixed her hair, twisting it back up into its elegant knot and placing the silver circlet she always wore over it all, positioning it so that the jewel sat it the middle of her forehead.

By the time I finished, the drowsiness had faded from her face and she practically bounced out of the room and down to the Royal Library, where Cuthbert had been having his lesson – though I doubted if he ever actually learned anything during the hour each day he spent with his tutor.

"Jane, the Prince and I were just discussing – what shall we do until supper? It must be at least an hour until Pepper has it ready," Gunther said, looking up from the book that the Prince had probably been pretending to read for the past hour.

I shrugged, highly doubting that the Cuthbert could 'discuss' anything – as far as I was concerned, he could only complain or argue. Ignoring this thought, I turned to Lavinia. "What would you like to do, Your Little Majesty?"

She glanced up from her rabbit, grinning with a mouth lacking of several teeth that had not yet grown in. "Bunny wants to shoot Gunther's longbow."

"Oh, no, Princess, I do not think that Gunther would want you to –"

"It is fine, Jane," Gunther interjected, standing and closing the book. "I would be honored if Bunny wanted to use my bow." This last he directed at the Princess, or perhaps the stuffed animal in her arms, but either way it caused her smile to widen.

I felt slightly bemused by how accommodating Gunther was being, and had been, for the last hour or so, and so followed in silence behind the other three, wondering whether he planned to stay this way, or return to his normal disagreeable self.

"Here it is, Princess," Gunther said, pulling the polished bow out of the Weapons shed and passing it to Lavinia. She set down her rabbit and ran her small fingers over it for a second before inquiring as to where the string was.

Gunther took out the string, deftly attaching the two together.

Lavinia tugged on the string, trying to pull it back as far as she could – which was, of course, not very far, but it was even less than it might have been on a normal bow, as Gunther's bow had been designed for someone with a certain degree of strength. I was, unfortunately, not as strong as was required to use it, which Gunther thought was hilarious and had considered it to be so since the very first day he had handed it to me and told me to shoot.

The arrow, as I recalled (which I tried not to – it was not the most pleasant of memories) had gone a crooked ten feet and skittered to a stop on the ground in front of the target.

Gunther had laughed about that day for weeks.

But now he was being perfectly kind, and placing the Princess's fingers where they belonged on the bow – no matter that it was much too big for her – and telling her how to aim. I wondered why this was, before it dawned on me that Lavinia was the only person in the whole castle (besides the Queen, of course) who had never been disparaged by Gunther, either to her face or behind her back. Considering that thought, I watched them together for a second. Lavinia's face was exuberant – Gunther's voice was gentle, and as he looked down at her, a small smile played around the corners of his lips.

I smiled also, and then turned to look at the Prince. In boredom, he had resorted once again to entertainment by the wooden practice swords, but as he had no one to fight, he was whacking carelessly at the dummy. I took a step forward, careful to keep clear of the dummy's mace ball arm.

"You want to hit his chest," I said, watching as the Prince once again barely dodged the dummy's return blow.

He completely ignored me, focusing instead on the dummy, hitting him harder and harder, so that the retaliation came faster and more haphazardly each time.

I was about to warn him how unwise that was, how fast that mace ball arm could swing when given that much force, but my attention was called away by Lavinia's excited voice.

Comprehending how hopeless she would be with a weapon far too large for her, she had handed the bow back to Gunther. He was shooting arrow after arrow, his forehead furrowed in concentration – and after his quiver was empty, eight of the ten arrows were in the very center bull's-eye ring.

"Champion shooting, Gunther," I called.

He turned to me, an easy smile on his face, but the smile drained away, along with all the color in his skin, when his eyes leveled over my shoulder. I saw his mouth open, heard him bellow my name, before something smashed into my side, knocking me forward with the force of a stampeding horse.

The colors seemed to seep gently from the scene before me, until everything was blurred into a murky gray.

The same color as his eyes, was my last thought.


	6. TDF! Meaning, Title Doesn't Fit!

**Disclaimer:** Guess who owns Jane and the Dragon? Not me! So, legally, I have no right to be writing about these characters, but, hey, when the inspiration bug bites, I obey!

**Notes:** Okay, first (there are a lot of notes this time, so prepare yourself) thank you to everyone for the reviews! (I love you more than anything in the whole wide world for taking the time to review!) Also, I'm totally new at this fan-fiction thing (this is my first story) and I just noticed two weird little thingies at the side of each review. One of them is a speech bubble, and the other one is an odd little triangle? Can anyone tell me what these are?

Second, I'm starting to get more ideas for JatD fan-fics, and I'm not sure if I should write these ones in first person as well, or go with third person like almost everyone else seems to do. Anyone have a suggestion?

Third, I just realized there is a lot (and I mean _a __lot_) more to this story I want to fit in, but I don't really want it to end up as thirty chapters, (with that many chapters, why not just write a book?) so most future chapters should be as long as this one (this is quite a long chapter. Or at least I thought it was.)

Fourth, what the heck is a PM? Other people mention these, but I have no clue what they are!

Fifth, when I say the line "someone murmured fervently, their voice cracking slightly," I realize that it should actually be "his or her voice..." but that sounds awful, so I took a liberty with grammar!

Sixth - I think, after this chapter, that I'm going to up the rating on this fan-fic to 'T' since there is some wound description that, if I were a mother, I probably wouldn't want a nine-year-old to read... they might be weirdly sensitive and get scarred by it! (I wouldn't know - I was allowed to watch South Park at age 8... or not really _allowed_, but my brother and I watched it despite what my parents tried to do to stop us, so... yeah.)

Seventh, (and last... finally... if anyone skipped over these, I don't blame them) every time I read this chapter, my opinion changes. Half the time I love it, and the other half the time I'm tempted to trash the whole thing and rewrite it - but it already took me way longer to write than any other chapter, and I'm much too lazy to go through that again. So I can't really guarantee if this chapter is good enough to be posted. Maybe I should have trashed it... *bites lip nervously*... but now I'm over-thinking everything, so I'll stop wasting your time and just go lie on the couch, eat popcorn, and watch the new Star Trek movie. (Does anyone else think Chris Pine is, like, the hottest guy ever? Or is that just me?)

Okay, one last thing - Happy New Year! No matter how good 2009 was for y'all, I hope 2010 is better!

* * *

Chapter 6.

Yeah. Told You That Something Bad Would Happen.

* * *

"Jane!"

Do you ever get that feeling that something is wrong?

"Jane, wake up!"

That, though you do not know what it is, something is very, very wrong?

"Please! Jane, please!"

That, while you lie there, asleep, or unconscious, something has happened? Something very, very bad?

"Jane, you have to wake up! Jane, wake up! Oh, God, please!"

But you cannot wake up. You just lie there – perhaps asleep, you are not quite sure, but most definitely not awake – while the voices around you begin to scream, to shout, to plead. Wake up, they say. That is what they want. They want you to come back to them.

So, of course, you comply. But right before your eyes flutter open, right then, you think – this is what it must be like to be dead.

__________

"Jane, I beg of you, wake up!"

"I am awake," I heard myself mumble. My voice sounded strange and faint, as if it were drifting from across a sea.

"Thank God," someone murmured fervently, their voice cracking slightly.

I felt my eyes open, but it was hardly different from when they had been closed, except that I saw colorful blurs instead of just black. I blinked several times in an attempt to clear my vision – it worked, or at least enough that I could identify the blurs as three pairs of eyes – one hazel, one brown and one gray. Strangely enough, the gray ones were the most interesting – they were the color of the sea after a storm, or perhaps rain-heavy clouds.

As I examined them, the gray eyes got closer and closer, until they were only inches from my face. "Jane? Can you hear me?"

It occurred to me, after a second, that _I_ was Jane and that I should have responded to this question, but it was too late, as the face with the gray eyes had withdrawn.

"Princess, I need you to go get Rake. Prince – get Smithy. Tell them that it is of the utmost urgency."

The brown and hazel eyes disappeared from my unfocused sight and the gray returned. Warm, rough fingers settled on my cheeks. Despite how weather-beaten the hands were, there was something about them moving slowly across my skin that was oddly soothing. I was tempted to close my eyes and drift to sleep, but this would mean I would not be able to see the gray eyes anymore, so I forced myself to remain awake.

"Jane? Can you hear me? Jane?"

I was prepared for the question this time, now remembering that 'Jane' referred to me, being, as it was, my name. "Yes," I whispered, my voice still strangely faint. "I can hear you."

"Oh, thank God. Does it hurt much?"

"Does what hurt?" I asked, frowning in confusion. This question did not make much sense, as nothing hurt. In fact, my body felt curiously numb.

"Your arm – it is bent at such an angle…" the blurry face with the gray eyes swallowed. "Surely it hurts?"

"No – I cannot feel anything," I mumbled. Actually, once I thought about, it seemed as if one of my arms was simply not there – there was no feeling in the slightest on the right side of my body.

"Oh."

There appeared to be a sudden sharpness to the gray eyes. I blinked, surprised, before realizing that my eyes finally seemed to be focusing properly, and the haze that had been affecting my eyesight was dissipating.

The face with the gray eyes, in its new clarity, was abruptly familiar.

"Gunther?" I wondered.

"Yes?" he replied, lifting his hands from my face and sitting back on his heels.

"I – what happened? Why am I on the ground?" I frowned, trying to raise myself up.

My efforts resulted in a pained gasp, and I fell back, biting my lip in order not to scream.

"Jane, do not move!" Gunther cried. "Your arm is broken and your side… your side… well, you cannot move – at least until they are bandaged."

"What happened?" I repeated, my teeth still clenched tight on the pain, wishing silently that the previous numbness had remained.

"The dummy – the mace ball arm… it spun too fast… it hit you, Jane. It hit you in the side – your right side."

I nodded acknowledgement that I had heard him, but this sent dizzy flares through my head, so I simply closed my eyes and focused on breathing deeply.

After several moments of this, Smithy's heavy footfalls and anxious voice interrupted my concentration. "Gunther, what is it?! What is wrong?!"

I opened my eyes just in time to see Smithy's gaze lower to my right arm. His eyes widened in horror before he immediately whisked all expression off his face, replacing it with his usual calm and unperturbed poise – but I had seen.

Smithy knelt at my right side, stripping off his gloves. He intently examined my injury for a second before looking up at the Prince, who was standing awkwardly several feet away.

"Your Majesty, do you know my scrap wood box?" His voice was low and urgent – the last time his voice had been so serious was when he was told he would no longer be part of the Castle staff for something Dragon had done.

Cuthbert replied with a timid nod.

"I need you to find me a piece of wood about this length," he indicated, "a long, wide strip of cloth, and a handful of the largest rags you can find." He looked back down at me. "Jane, I am going to splint your arm," he murmured, his tone grim and his face set with a frown.

"I thought you mended broken bones with plaster," I said, my voice tremulous and unsteady.

"I do, usually, but we do not have any plaster right now. The medical supply ship is due in the week after next," he admitted before his blue eyes flicked to Gunther, who kneeled at my left side with a strange expression on his face... one almost of guilt. I wondered absently why he looked so odd, but was distracted by Smithy's next words.

"Gunther, you will have to hold her down," he said quietly.

"I will be still," I protested weakly.

Smithy smiled down at me bleakly. "I know you will try, Jane, but it is very hard." He glanced back at Gunther. "Brace one of your hands against her shoulder; like this." He placed Gunther's hand where my collarbone met the shoulder bone, arranging his fingers so that they curved around my shoulder. "And hold her left hand." Smithy looked once again at me, his expression stern. "Now, Jane; squeeze his hand – do not writhe about when it hurts – just squeeze his hand as tight as you need to."

Gunther's fingers reached for mine, and our hands twined together.

"Will this one work?" Cuthbert ran up, holding out a slab of wood and dropping an armful of rags on the ground next to Smithy.

"Yes, this will do fine," Smithy murmured, taking the wood and brushing sawdust off it. "You should probably stand back, Majesty," he said, pushing the rags aside and leaning in closer, his gaze focused on my arm.

The Prince moved back several steps just as Rake and Lavinia appeared behind him. Rake's gasp as he saw my arm was audible even to me.

I turned my head away, not wanting to see the horror written across his face.

"White willow bark, Rake," Smithy said calmly.

"Y-yes," Rake mumbled nervously. His shoes clacked across the hard dirt as he headed for his garden. Lavinia went to stand next to Cuthbert, her small face full of worry.

"Okay, Jane," Smithy said, his voice soothing and as soft as down. I had heard him speak like that before – it was the tone he used on panicked horses to pacify their fear. "I am about to begin. Are you ready?"

I gritted my teeth, positive that this was going to hurt more than anything I had ever felt before. "Yes. I am ready."

I had felt pain before. Getting hit with a wooden sword – that was painful. Falling off a horse – that hurt also. Having a broken arm splinted – I imagined this was what it felt like to catch on fire, to have your flesh eaten away by heat.

Smithy had told me to squeeze Gunther's hand.

I squeezed.

I clutched his hand as tight as if it were the rope tying me to this world. I held on to his calloused fingers as if they alone could deliver me from this agony.

It hurt him, I knew. He flinched at how my short, ragged fingernails dug into the skin on the back of his hand; at the purple-black bruises that surely were forming beneath my vise-like grip.

But when I glanced up, his eyes were steadfast. "Is that honestly as tight as you can squeeze?" he smirked.

And for a second, just one second, it seemed as if this was just a normal day, and this was just Gunther, once again, insulting me – "Is _that_ as hard as you can hit, Jane? You can only lift _that_ much wood? You can only shoot _that_ far?" That, that, that – like I could not do anything at all, and anything I could do, I only did as well as anyone else.

But then my second was over and I was lying on the ground, biting a hole in my lip in an effort not to scream, and Gunther was nothing more than a hand coming from the fuzzy corner of my vision.

"Are you r-really _that_ much of a donkey?" I asked shakily. "Insulting s-someone who cannot fight back?"

He said something in reply to that. I am sure he did. It would go against everything in him not to insult me back. But I did not hear it, whatever it was.

Because my brain was not quite what it usually was.

Because my brain was saying I was on fire.

But I was not on fire. Of course not. Smithy was just fixing my arm. No fire.

Yes, I was on fire.

Nope. No fire.

Yes, yes. There were flames trickling along my bone, hungry flames lapping up my agony as fuel, ravenous flames refusing to go out.

"Gunther?"

Was that me?

No. Of course not. I had never whimpered in my whole life, and I never would.

"Gunther?!"

"Jane?"

"Water – get the water – Gunther, fire! My arm – it is – Gunther, my arm is on fire!"

"Jane, you are not on fire."

"Yes, I am! My arm… it… Gunther, are you listening?!"

"Yes, Jane. I am here. And you are not on fire."

"I am! My arm –"

"Jane, must you always argue? Your arm is broken – not on fire."

"…are you sure?"

"I am positive."

"How positive?"

"Just open your eyes and look yourself, silly girl!"

I tried as he suggested, opening one eye and looking.

He was right. My arm was not on fire.

Smithy had rolled my sleeve up to my shoulder and was tying the splint to my arm. His fingers moved gently over my swelling skin, but I could feel every single touch anyway.

I looked back up at Gunther and consciously loosened my painfully tight grip on his hand. As if doing so prompted him, he stopped holding me down and lifted his hand off my shoulder. In the absence of his warm hand, my shoulder felt bizarrely cold.

We were all of us silent for a minute; the only sounds were occasional grunts of pain from me and soft apologies from Smithy for not being gentler.

"Have you ever broken a bone, Gunther?" I asked finally, trying to distract myself from the realization that the three of us were in the most awkward position ever – I was lying spread-eagled in the dirt, probably because no one had dared to move me when they did not know the extent of my injuries; Smithy was kneeling at my side, bent almost in half over my arm, and Gunther was crouching by my other side, leaning forward to clutch my hand.

Gunther nodded in answer to my question, darkness crossing his face. "Once," he said, and that was all.

I was not stupid enough to try to force Gunther into talking about something he did not want to talk about, so I simply nodded.

"I am almost done, Jane," Smithy said calmly, lifting my arm up and tying one last rag around the splint, securing the wood to my arm.

"Good," I breathed, clenching Gunther's hand tightly once more as Smithy tightened all his previous knots and rearranged my arm so it was lying on my chest parallel to my collarbone.

"Done," Smithy announced, wiping a trickle of sweat off his brow.

I examined his handiwork, trying to move my arm as little as possible while doing so. "Will it heal with only a splint?" I wondered.

"Yes, but not very well. However, when the medical supply ship comes in, we can remove the splint and replace it with a plaster cast."

I nodded, noticing absently that Gunther's hand tightened almost imperceptibly on mine at Smithy's words. I ignored the observation, shifting up onto my left elbow and releasing Gunther's hand in the process. A knife of pain sliced across my side, protesting the movement, and I automatically placed a hand there as if that could stop the discomfort.

"Did it hurt?"

I glanced up, surprised to hear Lavinia's voice – I had forgotten Cuthbert and her were there at all. "No," I lied, not particularly wanting to describe exactly what having a bone splinted felt like. "Well, not much," I amended.

Gunther raised his eyebrows at me; in all likelihood thinking of when I had insisted my arm was on fire.

I blushed, looking away from him and back at the Princess. "Just please do not break _your_ arm, Majesty," I said, lifting my hand away from my side and leaning once again on my elbow.

"Yes, Jane," she agreed, her pale features serious.

I smiled at her, but my expression slipped a bit when I saw Gunther's face.

He looked almost horrified.

"Gunther, what –"

He reached out and took my hand again, staring at my palm with a strange intensity. His fingers gently brushed at a peculiar wetness that I had not noticed before; he glanced up with worried eyes. "Jane, your hand is covered in blood," he said quietly.

I flipped my hand so I could see and immediately felt my eyes widen.

There was blood smeared across my palm and fingers. The only injury there was an angry red blister from too much sparring with a wooden sword – since that much blood was certainly not flowing from a little blister, I knew instantly that it had come from a different source, a different wound that I had touched.

I shifted so I could get a better look at my side – where my hand been resting.

There, in the leather, were three small puncture holes. Blood leaked in sluggish streams onto my tunic, and little dribbles of red were beading up in the dust of the practice yard.

I pulled up my tunic, flinching as the leather scraped across the wound, and gulped at what I saw.

The skin of my side was a battered bloody mess, but I could discern the three holes made by the spikes of the mace ball. Crusts of drying blood rimmed the edges of the wounds – mauve-tinted purple and inky black already twined together beneath the blood to create the most repugnant and loathsome bruise I had ever seen.

"Smithy," I said, my voice a tad weaker than I would have liked, "I think I am going to need some more bandages."

* * *

Okay, one more thing I just randomly thought of, but felt too guilty about how much I blab on at the beginning of the chapter to post up there, is: Miss-Uncreative poking me a spork totally made me think about that scene in Wall-e where he isn't sure where to put the spork, (with the spoons or the forks) and he gets really adorable and confused! Aw, I love Wall-e! :D

Okay, now I feel awful. That was ridiculously off-topic. Sorry :(


	7. Wounds and Awkward Situations – How Fun!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Jane and the Dragon, 'cause if I did, Jane and Gunther would spend a lot less time fighting and a lot more time making out. Well... it is a little kids show, so maybe not making out, but there would definitely be some kissing action going on between those two.

**Notes:** Thank you all so, so, so much for the reviews! I feel like I don't really express just how happy they make me, but rest assured, I love you all for every little (or big) review you type out. If you ever feel under-appreciated for your reviews, trust me... you are totally appreciated.

Sorry this update took longer than normal. If I ever go more than two weeks without updating again, feel free to yell at me, either through a review or a PM (I now know what those are, thanks to my lovely and charming reviewers!)

Also, thanks to the people who complemented my writing of Jane's pain! I have never broken a bone before either (my mother is convinced that it's because I drink an obscene amount of milk) so I'm happy that I wrote it well enough to satisfy everyone.

And, last, (I'm trying to keep this shorter than last time), to keep-me-posted, I'll try to fit an archery lesson with Jane and Gunther in sometime after she's recovered - and if anyone has any suggestions about anything, feel free to share!

* * *

Smithy fixing up my side was not too different from when he had splinted my arm – he still had that calmly focused looked as he wiped the blotches of blood off my bruised skin, and he was still using Gunther to keep me in the correct position.

However, instead of Gunther holding me down and providing an outlet for my pain, I was sitting in his lap, leaning against his shoulder – Smithy said that this was so there could be sufficient space for him to get his hands (and, more importantly, the roll of cloth bandage he was holding) around my waist.

At first I protested (meaning I instantly refused in a high, whiny voice) – because, really… I could not sit in _Gunther's lap_! I would never hear the end of it… I could not even imagine what Dragon, or God forbid, _Pepper_, would think of that situation – but Smithy had told me, in a placid and completely emotionless voice, that he quite understood if I was uncomfortable with that, and as long I was willing to lift myself up each and every time the bandage went behind my back, he could do it that way instead.

It was a big wound. It would use almost three whole rolls of bandage to properly cover it.

I did not even want to think about how many times I would have to sit up in order to dress it. Or about how much the wound would hurt by the time he had finished wrapping.

As Smithy surely knew I would, I opted to use the method involving Gunther's lap.

Smithy sent the Prince and Princess away to make sure that Pepper was preparing tea with the plant Rake had fetched. Or, at least, that is what he told them – I knew it was so no one else had to witness me nearly _cuddling_ with Gunther.

Because that is what it was. _Cuddling_. I knew I had to do it because of my wound, but it was still absolute torture.

"Jane, will you stop wriggling? You are making this extremely uncomfortable," Gunther grumbled.

I almost laughed at that – as if it would _not_ be extremely uncomfortable if I stayed completely motionless.

"He is right, Jane," Smithy murmured, opening a small container of smelly ointment. "I cannot dress this properly if you keep shifting."

I reluctantly sat still as Smithy spread the ointment across my bruise, his touch remarkably gentle considering how big his hands were.

However, when he reached the punctures, I simply could not stop myself from squirming slightly.

But Gunther seemed to realize that I was moving because of the pain, for he reached down to my clenched fist and gently clasped it. Beneath his warm hand, my fingers unfurled, and I let out a deep breath I had not known I was holding. I still did not understand why he was being so kind lately, but I figured that surely it would not matter if I took advantage of his kindness before it was gone and he was back to being a biscuit weevil.

"Okay, Jane, I am going to start wrapping now," Smithy informed me, taking the roll of cloth and placing it against my skin.

I nodded – which was awkward to do, as my head was resting against Gunther's shoulder – and looked away from the nasty wound and up at the old stone of the castle wall.

I wondered silently where Dragon was – could he be in his cave? With his cows? What exactly did he do when he was not with me?

I also wondered if Gunther had forgotten to take his hand away – his fingers were now absently rubbing soothing circles on the back of my hand. I considered for a second asking him to stop, but it really did feel nice, and he was being so sweet lately, (except for his remark about "that" being as hard as I could squeeze) and since I was already sitting on his lap, him holding my hand did not seem like it should mean anything.

"Your hair smells of smoke," Gunther murmured, his breath ticklish on my ear.

"My best friend is a fire-breathing dragon – that is not really surprising," I said tiredly, glancing down as Smithy finished the first roll of cloth bandage and reached for the next one.

Gunther's other hand extended and he rested his fingers on my waist – or, rather, on the fluttering end of the bandage, which Smithy had forgotten to tuck back into the rest of the wrappings so that all his hard work did not become unraveled.

"I do not mind – it is just that the smoke smell, along with your hair color, makes it seem as if your head is on fire," he said, lifting his fingers off the fabric as Smithy tucked the bandage in and started wrapping once more.

I snorted at that. "Jester said that exact same thing several days ago."

Gunther said nothing in reply to that, but I could imagine what his expression was; a half smirk combined with a sneer – it was his default expression whenever Jester was mentioned… and no matter why he was being pleasant me, I was almost positive that feeling would not extend to Jester. I was not quite sure why they hated each other so – Rake was slightly frightened of Gunther, and Smithy was as indifferent to him as he was to most of the world, but Jester absolutely despised Gunther, and Gunther despised him right back. It was not quite so surprising on Gunther's end, as he was wont to dislike people before he even met them, but Jester had a much happier temperament. It had always seemed strange to me that Gunther was the only person in the castle Jester did not bother to even pretend to like.

"What is so interesting about that wall, Jane?"

"Hmm?" I asked, automatically turning to look up at Gunther – but as this put my lips nearly at his neck, and sent twinges of pain through my side, and also caused Smithy to give me an exasperated look, I immediately faced forward again.

"You have been staring at that wall for the longest time," he said, his voice once again tickling my ear and sending shivers down my back. "Do you see something there that I do not?"

"No. I was just thinking," I murmured.

"You seem to do that a lot," he said, sounding faintly amused.

"Unlike some of us," I replied, my voice lacking the usual scathing element it had when I was squabbling with Gunther.

"Ha ha," he said under his breath, his words just as flat as mine – missing that vicious underlying tone we normally had when speaking to each other.

I did not say anything back to him, but discovered that I could not look back at the wall – I had been staring at it much too long, as Gunther had said. There was only so much diversion that could be found in a wall, and I had long since passed the point of getting anything out of it.

And I did not want to look at Smithy either – it would just remind me how pummeled the skin hiding beneath the snowy white bandage was, and I did not want to think about that.

With nothing else to look at, I let my eyes fall closed. There was no chance I could ever fall asleep – like that would possibly happen, when I was settled in Gunther's lap – but it was still comforting to not have to focus on anything, or think.

All comfort disappeared when I felt something alight on my hair.

I thought it was a bug, at first.

But then I felt it in a different spot, and somewhere else, seconds later. No bug could move that quickly.

And then I recalled something I had noticed when I was younger, something about boys – that they were not aware that girls could feel when people touched their hair.

The idea had first occurred to me when Jester came to the Castle at age seven. His whole life, he had lived with his family in their caravan – and as Jester's family all had the same hair color as him, or a similar, darker, color, he was not accustomed to being around red-heads.

He must have fingered my hair fifty times the first week. And yet, every time I accused him of it, he would seem astonished that I could feel his hand on my hair.

The same thing had happened with Dragon. It had been a game to him – to see if he could touch my hair lightly enough that I would not feel it.

I always felt it.

Eventually, Jester grew used to my loud hair color, and Dragon gave up on his silly game (though, on occasion, I would feel a small tap on my hair and glance accusingly at Dragon, only to find him looking in the other direction and whistling innocently) but now it appeared that Gunther was doing the same thing.

I could not help but wonder if all boys were so stupid.

"Gunther, what are you doing?" I asked a bit snappishly, jerking my hand away from his as my eyes flew open.

"You have clods of dirt in your hair," he muttered, and I once again felt a tiny tug on one of the red strands.

I was not sure I believed him, until one of the clods he had dislodged fell down onto my neck.

"Oops, sorry," he murmured, picking up the clump, which then crumbled in his too-big fingers, sprinkling earth on my shoulders.

"Champion, Gunther," I said grumpily. "Now there is dirt everywhere."

"Sorry," he repeated apologetically, brushing some of it away.

I shook my head, sending the dirt flying out of the waves in my hair. "Is it all gone now?" I questioned.

"There are still a few… little…" his fingers plucked at my hair, "… bits left."

"Well, get them out," I grumbled, flinching as his hand caught on one the many tangles in my hair.

"Do you ever brush this mess?" he asked, gently unsnarling the knot.

"Yes, of course! Every morning and night. It just gets tangled so fast."

"Hmm," he said, as his fingers reached another knot and disentangled that one as well.

"I am starting the third roll, Jane – I should be done quite soon, and then we can make a sling for your arm," Smithy said softly.

"Thank you, Smithy," I said.

Then I wondered absently why the girls in town went on so much about sitting in boys' laps when it was not even comfortable. I shifted a bit, trying to get into a more agreeable position, and the movement sent a flare of pain through my arm and side.

I winced, biting back a gasp of pain.

"Sorry – did I pull your hair again?" Gunther asked, pausing in the act of untangling yet another knot.

"No, it is just – my arm…" I trailed off; I would not want for Gunther to think that I was whining.

He said nothing, just reached for my hand again, our fingers interlacing. My fingertips brushed against a strange dry crust on his knuckles and I glanced down at our hands, wondering what it could be.

There, on the back of Gunther's hand, were four bloody crescents topped with dried scabs.

"Are those from me?" I whispered, so that Smithy could not hear.

"Are what from you?" Gunther asked, mimicking my whisper and moving his head closer so that his lips almost brushed my ear. It did not tickle so much anymore when his warm breath hit my ear like that; instead it felt oddly tingly.

"The scabs on your knuckles – are those from my fingernails?"

Gunther looked down as well, his face showing no emotion at all at what he saw there.

"I suppose they must be," he said, shrugging, which bounced my head up and down.

I blinked, then shook my head lightly. "I am so sorry," I mumbled, my voice still too quiet for Smithy to hear.

"It is nothing," he said, sounding completely nonchalant. "I am used to being bruised and beaten."

"What – from training?" I asked, confused by his words.

His face turned absolutely unemotional before a sudden, and oddly fake, smirk spread across his features. "Yes, obviously that is what I mean, Jane," he said snidely, dropping my hand and looking away from me, out at the wall he had berated me for staring at earlier.

I frowned, opening my mouth, about to ask him what was wrong, but Smithy interrupted before I could get the question out.

"I believe I am done," the blacksmith said, tying the bandage and rolling my undershirt down over the now covered wound.

"Champion – now I can finally get you off me," Gunther said to me, his voice harsh. "I have probably lost the use of my legs because you are so heavy."

His nasty words startled me, for they provided such a contrast from how unusually nice he had been being lately, but I quickly gathered my wits and gave him a glare. "So sorry to inconvenience you, dung-brain," I muttered venomously. I felt slightly bereft in the absence of his benevolence, but I ignored the feeling and leaned to the side so that I had the aid of my undamaged arm in getting up.

"Wait, Jane, let me –" Smithy said, reaching forward with a concerned expression.

I pushed to my feet, giving Gunther a satisfied smirk because I had made it up without any help.

But then the world began to sway dangerously, and my legs felt like the pea pudding Pepper sometimes made, and there was a pain in my side as if I had just been run through with a lance.

Strong hands clasped my shoulders right before I fell, and I heard Gunther say almost worriedly, "Jane? Are you alright?"

"I – yes, I am fine… yes, I – what do you care, anyway, Gunther?" I spat finally, trying to shove him away one-handed.

He held my shoulders tighter, laughing without humor. "Did I damage your pride, Jane? I am sincerely sorry. You are actually the lightest girl who has ever sat on me."

I scowled at him, wondering just how many girls he must have had on his lap for him to be able to say that. "You did not 'damage' my pride, Gunther. I really could not care less what you say about me," I snapped, pulling away from him.

It was, unfortunately, a very foolish thing for me to do, as I was still not quite steady on my feet.

Gunther caught me once again, one of his hands clenching my shoulder and the other looping around my back. This time I simply held onto him with my good arm, keeping my lips clamped shut on all the insulting words I wanted to let loose – it would not be wise to get into an argument with the person who was supporting at least half of my weight. Even if he was a beef-brain who could not decide whether he wanted to be kind or odious.

"Okay, Jane," Smithy said, completely ignoring our squabbling and folding a large strip of fabric into a right triangle. "I am going to make a sling for your arm."

I nodded, mildly impressed that Smithy could put up with my near-constant quarrelling with Gunther – I knew for certain that very few other people would have been able to stand the two of us bickering as long as it had taken to bandage my injuries. Not that we had been bickering much when I was sitting on his lap – it was not really until we stood up again that the arguing had started.

To allow Smithy access to my arm, Gunther slowly turned me so I faced away from him, but his arm was still curled around my waist and his hand did not move from its place on my shoulder. I swayed, a little unbalanced by the movement, and Gunther pulled me tighter against him, which placed the top of my head right beneath his chin (he had grown much taller than me as the years passed) and caused the entire length of his body to be pressed against mine.

I felt the fiery heat of a blush spread across my cheeks and the bridge of my nose, and silently thanked God that Gunther could not see my face.

Then I prayed that no one would choose this time to walk by – I was happy that Smithy, who would say nothing of this, was the only one who was witnessing my humiliation.

Trying to tune out the fact that I was held that close against Gunter, I focused instead on the fabric that Smithy was looping around my splinted arm. He very gently adjusted my forearm so that it sat in the fold, but I still had to bite back a groan.

Unseen to Smithy, Gunther's hand squeezed my shoulder comfortingly.

My facial expression did not change, as I could not decide whether I should frown or smile at his gesture – I wished exasperatedly that he would pick an emotion and stick with it, because I was tired of dealing with the temperamental fallout. I could stand his cruel words or his kind ones, but I was not sure if I could keep up with him if his emotions kept flipping back and forth.

Smithy pulled the ends of the sling up beneath my hair and fumbled with them for several seconds before shaking his head. "I cannot tie the ends, Jane, without knotting them in your hair. Could you tie them, Gunther?" he asked, raising his almost-invisible blond eyebrows.

Gunther murmured his assent, removing his hand from my shoulder and tying a rapid knot, his fingers warm as they brushed across the back of my neck. His arm left my waist for a second; just long enough to pull the two ends of the sling tight, and it returned quickly enough that I barely had time to wobble. He did not place his hand back on my shoulder – instead it settled on my upper arm, the heat of his fingers sinking through my thin undershirt.

Smithy took a step back, as if admiring his handiwork, and nodded. "That should do fine until we get some plaster."

Gunther shifted at his words, loosening his hold on me slightly so that we were not nearly so close. "Would it be better for her arm if she gets the plaster cast sooner?" he asked, a strange hint of guilt coloring his query. I turned my head around, tilting my face up to look at him, but his eyes were focused on Smithy.

"The sooner the better," Smithy replied.

"I can get some," Gunther uttered, his voice hard and suddenly determined, his stormy eyes just as resolute. "Tomorrow; the day after, at the latest. Would that be good?"

Smithy, being Smithy, did not question where Gunther would _find_ this plaster, just nodded. "That would be perfect."

Gunther nodded also, but when he glanced down at me and saw my confused expression, his face was emotionless and absolutely unresponsive.

I would have asked him just where he expected to find plaster, but I realized right then that, with my face turned up and him looking down at me, our lips were nearly touching – barely a centimeter separated them. For a single moment I felt his warm breath on my mouth, and, for the first time in a very long while, I imagined just what it would be like to kiss a boy – and not just any boy; Gunther.

The instant the thought passed through my mind, I was horrified at myself for thinking it, and I looked away, embarrassed and vaguely disoriented; Gunther did the same. For a second, as if I had some peculiar extra sense, I was abruptly sure that he had had the same thought as me… but of course that was ridiculous.

"Ah – is the tea ready?" Smithy asked as the Little Majesties and Rake walked up, pulling my attention away from my foolish thoughts.

"Yes – Pepper is about to bring a cup out," Rake said, his eyes widening as they settled on Gunther and me.

I knew what it must have looked like. Gunther's arm was tight around my waist, and his other hand was curled (almost possessively, I was sure it must appear to Rake) around my upper arm as I leaned into him.

I expected Gunther to jump back at Rake's stunned gaze… to completely drop me (for he was still supporting most of my weight) as if my skin burned his, in order to make a point of just how little he cared for me.

But he did not.

Instead, he said, loud enough for Rake to hear, "Do you think you can walk now?"

A relieved smile spread across my face, (I had not been anticipating being dropped) and I nodded. "Yes, absolutely."

Gunther removed his arm and his hand, but kept a close distance, leaving me to completely support myself – which I had not done since the dummy had smashed me into the ground.

I took tentative step, and it became obvious to Rake that Gunther had been holding me up for a reason.

Both Gunther and Smithy rushed to my aid before I could fall, Gunther grabbing my good arm and Smithy my shoulder. After making sure that I was stable again, Smithy released my shoulder and ran a hand through his blond hair thoughtfully.

"Well, I think you should be able to walk fine tomorrow – it is most likely just a little bit of shock and the pain from your side. However, you were intending to sleep on the Princess's floor tonight, were you not?"

I nodded.

"Well, I am afraid that will not work. You should not sleep on the ground; you need a bed, otherwise the wounds on your side will most likely open again."

I glanced at Lavinia's face – she looked absolutely crestfallen. "You cannot sleep in my room, Jane?" she asked, her brown eyes big and terribly sad.

"She could sleep in your bed with you, Your Majesty," Smithy said, looking at the Princess also, a small smile hovering at the edges of his mouth. "Just not on your floor."

Instantly, Lavinia's sad expression melted and a glorious smile flooded her features. "You can sleep with me and Bunny, Jane!" she exclaimed, even more excited –if that was possible – about this prospect.

I smiled also (though it was a bit of a pained smile – Gunther was not holding me up so much as steadying me, and the effort of holding myself up was definitely taking a toll) and gestured at Cuthbert. "And Gunther can still sleep in your room, Your Highness, so it works perfectly."

Lavinia shook her head. "Oh, no, Jane," she said adamantly, "Gunther has to sleep in my room too. That way if your owie starts hurting at night, Gunther can help you!"

Everyone turned to Smithy, automatically expecting him to give advice, as if he were a physician. He simply shrugged. "It is a good idea."

"Alright, Princess, I will sleep in your room as well," Gunther agreed unconcernedly, casually adjusting his hold so that he was supporting more of my weight. Though I hated having to be dependent on anyone, I inwardly let out a sigh of relief.

"I will _not_ sleep in _her_ room!" Cuthbert exclaimed, jabbing a finger at his sister, an angry pink flush trailing across his face. I watched him, a bit nervous that he was going to have one of his infamous temper tantrums and make everything just that much worse.

"You can sleep in your own bed, if you wish," Gunther said, his voice calm; obviously it had occurred to him as well that a temper tantrum was exactly what we did not need right now. "You do not have to sleep in the Princess's room with us."

Cuthbert scowled – it made his pink, puffy face even more unattractive. "But I want you to sleep in _my_ room!"

"I am sorry, Your Highness," Gunther said even more calmly than before. "You can either sleep in your sister's room with us or in your own bed, but I cannot sleep in your room tonight."

The Prince crossed his arms, and glared viciously at Gunther – or perhaps at me.

Gunther's hand tightened on my arm, but he said next words in a deceptively unruffled voice. "Your Majesty, your face will freeze like that if you are not careful."

Cuthbert stuck his tongue out at Gunther and stalked off in the direction of the Royal Gardens.

"Oh, petal!"

We all turned to see Pepper standing beneath the arch, a trembling mug of tea in her hand. She let loose another squeal of horror and rushed to me, shoving the tea into Gunther's hand and, in a flare of movement, relieving him of his position and taking my weight. I was not quite sure that she would be able to support me, but her small frame obviously hid more muscle than anyone would have guessed.

"Oh, petal, does it hurt much?" she asked, running gentle fingers over my arm and the bulge beneath my undershirt where the bandage resided.

"Not at all," I fibbed, offering her a fake smile.

"Liar," she accused, shifting her hands so she held me up even more tightly before giving Smithy, Gunther, and Rake searing glances. "Shame on all of you," she said, a hint of anger coloring her words. "Standing around like dullards when any person with a whit of sense would have realized this girl should be sitting down. Come, Jane," she announced with a bit more force than was really necessary. A little dismayed to hear such power in her shrill voice, I stumbled along, trying to put the least amount of weight on her as possible as we made our excruciatingly slow way to the kitchen.

When we were halfway there, our entourage trailing along behind us, she paused, sending a sudden jolt through me as she pulled to a stop. "Jane, do you want to walk slower?" she asked, once again sounding only soft and worried.

I realized then that I was gritting my teeth against the pain, and that funny little gasps were escaping with every step.

"Do not be ridiculous, Pepper – I am fine," I wheezed, purposely avoiding her determined brown eyes.

She gave me a reproachful glance for the lie before grabbing Gunther's arm and yanking him over, depositing the cup of tea in Rake's hands.

"Well, Gunther, you always brag about that strength of yours," she said, "so prove it for us. Carry her."

"No, really, Pepper, I am fine!" I exclaimed. "Nobody needs to carry me!"

She gave me a hard look, and I was reminded that while Pepper was perfectly sweet most of the time, she was vicious when it came to the wellbeing of her loved ones – she had once chased Rake back to bed with a spoon for trying to garden when he had the flu.

Gunther gave me a look that was half amused and half reluctant, but when Pepper tapped her shoe against the ground impatiently, a glare spreading across her pretty features, he scooped me into his arms and headed for the kitchen without a word.

"This is_ so_ humiliating," I whispered, looking away from Rake's wide eyes and Smithy's impassive gaze and focusing instead on the little metal studs on Gunther's leather tunic.

"At least you are not heavy," Gunther said resignedly, rearranging his arms so they were farther away from my wound. Caught off guard by the movement, I gripped his shoulder.

Behind us, I heard Rake whisper that it was probably good Jester was not here to see this. I pretended I had not heard, though I automatically jerked my hand away from Gunther's shoulder, a true redhead blush flooding my cheeks.

He glanced down at me, raising an eyebrow and smiling sardonically.

I glared up at him, thinking off all manner of nasty things I would do to him with my sword if he ever mentioned this to anyone.

He laughed softly, as if he had read my thoughts. "Do not worry about it… I will not speak a single word." His voice was quiet enough that no one would be able to hear except me. "Do you not think that I would rather keep this a secret as well? Imagine how betrayed the girls in the village would feel."

I opened my mouth, a scathing reply sitting on the edge of my tongue, but it never made it past my lips.

Though once it bothered the girls in the village that Gunther carried the name Breech and had traitor's blood running through his veins, when he turned fifteen and hit a growth spurt they had decided that no matter what their parents said of his family, he himself surely could not be so bad, with those broad shoulders and that dark intense gaze.

I pictured for a second Gunther kissing one of the village girls – May, perhaps, who was Smithy's cousin, and shared his blonde hair and sky blue eyes, or Rebecca – she had long waves of honey-colored tresses nearly to her hips. I was sure that Gunther liked blonde girls best – I had never seen him around with a brunette before. Or a redhead.

Gunther's smile had disappeared. "Surely you know I am jesting," he said, his voice just as soft as before, but now somehow almost gentle. His arms tightened around me the tiniest bit, and I had the strangest feeling that I was being reassured.

"Jests are funny," I muttered, not feeling reassured at all as I shoved away the image of Rebecca and Gunther twined around each other.

"Well, obviously I am not the Jester, am I?" He looked up and away from me, his tone faintly bitter.

Before I could say anything else, he had set me down on the bench. Rake handed the tea to me and I took it with fingers that trembled slightly – though I would never admit it, all the walking had taken a definite toll. The tea burned a path down my throat, but I gulped it as quickly as possible, eager to bring about an end to the persistent ache in my arm and side. Pepper refilled my mug as everyone – everyone except Cuthbert, of course; he was still off sulking – crowded around the small table, eating the supper Pepper had prepared.

"Well," Pepper said finally, buttering a piece of warm bread and placing it on my plate. "Tonight has been a bit of a disaster, has it not?"

She got murmured agreements in reply.

"I hate babysitting," Gunther grumbled.

"Do not complain – you are not the one with a broken arm," I said, ignoring the bread and taking a sip of tea; the pain had destroyed any desire I might have had to eat anything. The tea tasted bitter and unpleasant, but I ignored the flavor and focused on how it would take the ache away.

"True," he murmured, resting his chin on his hand and glancing at my arm. A quick flash of something that seemed almost like sympathy passed across his face, but it was gone so fast I was not even sure I had seen it.

I looked away from him, down at the disgusting tea. When Pepper cleared her throat loudly and gave me a meaningful look, I scowled and downed the rest of the mug. She poured me a third one and smiled. "Just this last cup, petal. That should be enough for the rest of the night."

I nodded, and we fell silent again.

When Lavinia let out a huge yawn – her fourth in the past five minutes – I struggled to my feet, concentrating on not swaying. "Time for bed, Princess."

Gunther stood as well, placing a steadying arm on my left elbow, and nodded at the Princess. "We should probably go find your brother as well."

I could tell that Pepper's gaze was focused on the slightly tanned hand holding me up, but I ignored her knowing look and headed for the stairs, my steps as steady as I could make them. Lavinia trailed along behind us, rubbing her eyes and letting loose another gigantic yawn.

Once we made it out of the kitchen, I sighed and let myself sag a tiny bit, relaxing now that Pepper's watchful eyes were no longer on me.

Just as I thought I was finished being mothered, Pepper's voice rang out from the kitchen, her tone brooking no argument. "Jane, you are _not_ walking up all those stairs. Gunther, carry her."

I whipped around and glared at Gunther. "If you even _think_ about picking me up," I growled threateningly, "you will wake up with something sharp jabbed into your heart."

He grinned at me, obviously not impressed by the threat. "Oh, but Pepper knows best. Surely I should listen to her."

I snarled at him, and when he came forward with his arms outstretched, I jumped backwards. The move resulted in me stumbling over Rake's trowel. Gunther caught me before I could fall (just how many times had he done that tonight?) and lifted me easily.

"You are doing this to torment me," I hissed, shoving weakly at his chest with my left arm.

"Of course," he smiled, his gray eyes filled with laughter.

I glowered at him, but found that I could not hold his amused gaze. Instead I looked at my hands; the left one curved around his shoulder and the right poked out of the sling to rest limply on his chest. I knew that I should move them, yank them away so I did not look like a simpering newlywed clinging to her lover, but as we started climbing the stairs, I realized I would need to hang on to keep from being overly jostled and risk reopening my wound.

Despite this perfectly reasonable argument, a nagging voice in the back of my mind that sounded eerily like Pepper told me that I was clinging to Gunther because I _wanted_ to.


	8. Sound and Silence

**Disclaimer:** Okay, look, I don't have anything even mildly witty to put here right now - just please don't sue because I already know I don't own these characters.

**Notes:** I am so so sorry that this has taken so long. I, in the unplumbed depths of my stupidity, did not think about the fact that longer chapters would take (gasp!) longer time to write. So, this is the longest chapter so far, but it also took almost two months to come up with... and, I'm sorry to say this, kids, but I think most of the following chappies will take this long as well - though I really hope not :(

On a happier note, I love my reviewers! You are the reason this chapter took two months, not two years! A cookie - no, scratch that - a whole damn _cake_ to anyone who took the time to type out a review, no matter how long it was! Please please keep reviewing!

Okay, third; despite being a record thirteen pages on Microsoft Word, absolutely nothing actually happens in this chapter. It's a lot of talking, and a lot of silence. (Hence the very lame title that I put no real effort into - but at least it fits on the bar) Everyone's probably a little OOC, but I hope not enough to make anyone really mad. I also tried to explain just why Gunther has been acting odd since all the older and "wiser" (the King's a nice guy, it's true, but I don't think I'd put my life in the hands of a guy who thinks a ride in a pig cart sounds like a jolly good idea) people have left the Castle.

So, I hope this chapter will tide everyone over for at least a little longer, because I have been slaving over it for a month. (Not really. That was for dramatic effect. I definitely did spend some time on it, though.)

P.S. Any comments, suggestions, or assorted ramblings are completely welcome (and totally encouraged!)

* * *

Outside, there were weak traces of sunlight, but it was utter blackness in Lavinia's room. She had fallen asleep within ten minutes of snuggling underneath the covers, but as her bedtime was several hours before Sir Theodore normally released Gunther and me from our knightly duties, we were nowhere near tired. Even my injuries did not exhaust me enough to fall asleep when the sun was still – barely – gracing the sky outside.

"Have your wounds stopped hurting?" Gunther asked from the darkness. Though I could not see him, I heard the rustle of sheets as he sat up in his makeshift bed; obviously he had also realized just how impossible it would be to fall asleep this early. We could have gone down to the kitchen again, but it was not really worth the trouble of traipsing down six flights of stairs if Pepper would simply force me back to bed.

"Mostly," I murmured in answer to his question, absently rubbing at the itch of the bandage. Though I probably should have felt at least slightly bad that we were talking, the knowledge that Lavinia slept like a rock (a deaf rock, no less) did not allow for it.

"Good."

He fell silent. I heard a snore from the next room and smiled.

When we had finally ascended the last step (or, rather, when Gunther had ascended the last step) we had found the Prince sulking on his bed. He had not uttered a single syllable to Gunther or me, instead just sticking his tongue out at us and slamming the door in our faces. Doubtless he wanted us to think that he was simmering in there, filled with silent hatred – but his snore had just announced the state he was really in.

I glanced over at where I knew Gunther to be in the darkness and dug a question I had been saving out of the back of my mind. "Where did you intend to find the plaster?" I asked quietly. I had not forgotten that I meant to ask, even if I had been a bit too… preoccupied… (with foolish thoughts of Gunther's lips moving on mine, no less) to ask before.

"It does not matter."

"I want to know, Gunther. Who has plaster, if Smithy does not? Tell me."

"Jane, it does not matter." His words were precise and slow, as if he were speaking to a dimwitted child.

I gritted my teeth, refusing to let him get to me and tug my mind away from my question. "Tell me, Gunther. Now."

"No."

"_Now_, Gunther Breech, or so help me, I will –"

"Will what? With a broken arm and a battered side, what can you do to me? What can you do to anyone? You are so weak that Dragon could blow you over with a breath."

"I am _not_ weak!" I exclaimed, filled with a sudden desire to roll out of the bed and prove to him just how fine I was – it did not matter that my right side was almost completely out of commission; I could still beat Gunther at anything, and I _would_ beat him, if I had to – anything to prove that I was not weak!

"Jane, do not bother yourself trying to prove your strength to me," Gunther said, his cool amusement making my anger swell and grow so that it was almost a tidal wave of fury. "You know you always lose in competitions involving muscle."

I was so vexed I could have screamed, but instead I lifted my head off my pillow and hit it several times, as hard as I could. I had discovered years ago that this was a good method for venting anger – which I had had an abundance of ever since I had begun my training as a Lady in Waiting.

"What was that noise?" Gunther asked.

I glared in his direction before responding dully. "I punched my pillow."

"Charming," he said. "And did that make you want to impale me any less?"

"No," I muttered. "It never does."

He laughed softly. Somehow this sound made me feel helpless – perhaps it was the fact that I was furious enough to want to send my fist flying into his face, and he was not the slightest bit perturbed by this; in fact, he thought my fury was funny.

The silence stretched on after his chuckle – though it seemed a lot longer than it really was, because I was wrestling with my ire at myself as it occurred to me that I had let him succeed at his goal of angering me enough to distract me from my question – but Gunther finally broke it.

"I make it easy for you to hate me." His voice was uncaring, as if he had always intended for this bitter rivalry to sour any chance of friendship we might have had.

"Yes," I replied instantly. "You do."

Then I considered my words for a second and found them to be a bit unfair.

"Well, I do not really hate you, Gunther. Actually, for the past little bit, you have been quite…" I trailed off, searching for the right word. "Quite… sweet." I half-choked on the word, hardly able to believe it had been the one my tongue was waiting for.

He laughed again, but it was different somehow than the one before it – self-depreciating instead of mocking. "I would not think that you could ever find me sweet," he said, the uninterested tone gone, replaced by one slightly less apathetic.

"That is because you never _are_ sweet."

"Well… not to you, no."

I bit my lip – it abruptly seemed as if something was sitting on my stomach, hampering my intake of air. Wondering at the strange sensation, I stared at the darkness hiding the ceiling as intensely as if it held some sort of explanation for it.

"You mean you are sweet to other girls?" I asked carefully.

He did not say anything in reply to that.

"You never break a promise, do you, Jane?" he wondered eventually. I knew I should have been grumpy at yet another change in topic and emotion, but he asked it so sincerely that I found I could not feel the slightest bit of anger, even if it was not much of a question; he knew I put my promises to my friends above myself every time.

"Not if I can help it, no," I said softly, unconsciously searching for his face in the darkness. I could not find it, and despite this not being a surprise (considering just how dark it was) it still felt strangely wrong.

"Will you promise me, then?"

The query was spoken so quietly and with so much more emotion than I thought could be packed into five words that I caught my breath, unable to imagine that he would ask something I would say 'no' to, even if it was coming from a beef-brain like Gunther.

"Promise you what?" I whispered.

"Promise me that you will not tell this to anyone else."

"I promise."

He let out a tiny huff of laughter. "Oh, Jane. So willing to throw your word to the wind." He paused. I considered for a moment whether his words should offend me, but he had said them as if they were complementary, so I remained silent.

"The plaster – my father keeps stores of it, and other medical supplies, in one of his warehouses." His voice was now slack and spotless – every bit of emotion from before had been stripped away. It occurred to me that this was the voice he always used when he spoke of his father.

"That makes sense," I said. "I mean, his sailors are bound to get injured every so often –"

"Jane, you are good; and so foolishly suppose that everyone else is as well. My father does not keep the supplies in case of injury – he keeps them in case of siege."

"Siege?"

"Yes, siege or war. The Castle will be desperately in need of medical supplies in either case, so he stockpiles them. If the day should ever come when they are needed, he will sell them for twice their worth to the King. Or to the enemy, I suppose, if they pay more."

For a second I just stared at the place where Gunther's voice was coming from, my mouth hanging open.

However, something finally tumbled out of my slack jaw, and it was, "How can you say something like that, something so awful, with no emotion – as if it is nothing?!"

He laughed humorlessly. I had heard glum laughs before, of course, being acquainted with Jester – he was the king of mixing emotions that did not necessarily make sense together – but this was the bleakest sound I had ever heard. It sent an unnerved shiver down my spine just to hear such a noise spill from Gunther.

"Oh, Jane, as if I do not have experience with this sort of thing! My grandfather traded with enemy troops, remember? It is in my blood to do the wrong thing."

"Gunther, what a terrible thing to say! You do the right thing. Sometimes."

He let out that bleak laugh again, and I felt strange sadness trickling into my heart. It alarmed me, as I never would have expected Gunther to bring about that feeling. "Well, I suppose sometimes is better than never," he said.

I bit my lip and ignored the sadness for Gunther – it was not something I wanted to feel for him. I would much rather stick with pretending he was constantly rude and nothing else.

"So will you ask your father for the plaster tomorrow?" I asked after a minute.

"Of course not. I will just take it," he said, the glum fading from his voice.

"You mean steal?"

I could not see him, but I somehow knew he was giving me a faintly disgusted look. "Set aside your scruples for a day or two, Jane. You need the plaster – it does not matter where it comes from. I should not have even told you where I meant to get it."

"No, I am glad you did," I interrupted, fluffing up my pillow again – it was a bit of a challenge one-handed – and laying my head back down.

"And you will not tell anyone else where I got it?" he asked, the words low and intense.

"I made a promise, Gunther, and I keep my promises," I replied.

"Thank you," he murmured.

He was quiet, and so was I. Seconds, or perhaps minutes, oozed on by in tension-tainted silence. After a bit, I shifted so I was lying on my good side, facing him in the darkness.

"Gunther?" I said finally. It sounded small and tentative, and so weak I wanted to yank his name back from where it was lingering in the air and feign sleep.

"Yes?"

If he had said it any other way than he had – soft and questioning – I would have invented something else to ask him. But since he had not…

"Lately you have been so… so… well, nice. Why is that?"

"Would you rather I be rude?"

"No – no, of course not. I am just curious. It… well, it is not really like you to be so polite."

"I suppose not."

I waited for him to say something after that, but he had apparently finished, because he did not utter another word.

"Well… why, though?" I questioned, my voice still a bit too hesitant for my liking.

"You have not given me a reason to be rude."

"That has never stopped you before."

There was a reluctant smile in his voice when he replied. "You do not think much of me, do you, Jane?"

I smiled too. It seemed strange that we were discussing our long-standing rivalry so calmly. "Do you expect me to?"

"Well… no. I should not expect anyone to think well of me, I suppose."

I opened my mouth, about to say that no, he really should not – but I closed my lips tight on the words. We were having an actual conversation, one that did not involve our traditional insults, and I was slightly enjoying it… even if it did make me feel out of sorts and a bit off center.

I was not sure what to say to him after ruling out the rude reply. I felt a bit uncomfortable seeing this side of Gunther; though I knew that there was a layer of kindness beneath the cocky, arrogant donkey I saw normally, I glimpsed it only rarely. I realized that I almost liked him better that way – as an obstacle to my training, and not a real person. It made things easier – not that I had ever taken the easy way out of anything.

"Well, I think you are being kind because there is no one for you to impress," I said after a while, keeping a light tone, as if we were discussing something as simple as the weather.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Gunther asked, his voice just as careless as mine. In the dark, I saw his outline shift as he pulled his legs up to his chest and rested his elbows on his knees, his fingers twining together. Though I could not see the details through the inky black surrounding us, I envisioned he looked a bit like the very picture of negligence.

"I mean without the King and Sir Theodore, who is worth wasting your charade on?"

"What charade?"

I snorted. "Gunther, I know you are not really like that. Arrogant, yes, but not that arrogant. And not that rude. I am not a fool. I know what it is you do."

"What is it that I do?"

I considered for a second – his voice was nearing dangerously uninterested, and he was so ridiculously calm that it was almost a screamingly obvious hint for me to shut my mouth and pick something else to discuss.

"Please, Jane… enlighten me. What do I do?" He was now a bit forceful, a touch of challenge heating his words.

"You use them – your arrogance and anger." I fell silent, ignoring the tea-dulled twinge in my side as I sat up and looked to Gunther's shape in the darkness. He had retained the nonchalant position, but his chin was no longer sitting on his hands – his face was turned toward me, a certain tenseness painted onto the blackness around him.

"Use them how?" The disinterest had faded, but the intensity had remained sunken into his tone.

"You use them against me, against everyone. You use them and try to twist yourself into what you think you should be. You are always trying to be better, and stronger, and to care less than anyone else. You always want to care the least. Did you ever think that… that, perhaps… we would all like you better if you came as you were?"

I said it softly, and when Gunther did not respond, I wondered if I had spoken so quietly that he had not heard.

"Go on," he prompted after a minute, the intensity still simmering behind his voice.

I took a deep breath, knowing that even if my previous words had not been enough to anger him, what I was going to say next certainly would. Ignoring that and fingering the rough cloth of my sling a bit anxiously, I started again. "You have these walls – you lock your own opinions away somewhere, tight behind a wall of swagger and arrogance, and you tell whomever can benefit you most exactly what they want to hear. Does it not hurt to do so, to become someone different for people you do not even respect?" I paused, waiting for an answer, but perhaps Gunther had thought it was a rhetorical question, because he said nothing. "I guess you do not care," I said, looking down at the blanket I had pulled up over my knees. Though I could not discern the color in the dark, I remembered it being a soft, pretty purple… like lavender. "And, I guess," I whispered, "even if you did, it would not matter. You would keep every single qualm crushed, and continue on anyway."

"Why should that make you sad?" he asked quietly, the vehemence gone.

I frowned in confusion, about to say that no, it did not make me sad – but… I _was_ sad. Though anger was the normal result of a conversation with Gunther, he did make me feel a bit down sometimes… but that was in a different way. That was when I let his insults get to me.

This sad… it seemed unlike that. It was deeper, somehow. It was like something that had been festering beneath my skin without my even knowing it was there. It felt strange to think of it, when its existence had been unknown to me for so long.

Not liking the feeling of poking at a festering wound, I tried to think of something else to talk about, something that would not make me feel so uncomfortable.

Casting about my head for a change of topic, I suddenly encountered a memory I had almost forgotten – the day my mother had told me about the dangers of men. Willing to think about anything as long as it was not the feelings I did not understand, I focused on the memory, recalling my mother's words.

_Men cannot be trusted, Jane, _she had said. _They all want one thing._

_Mother…_ I had muttered in protest, an embarrassed flush already beginning on my cheeks.

_No, dear, listen. This is important. There will be men who you think you can trust – and perhaps they deserve that trust. But you must realize that you cannot trust them at night. There is a reason why young ladies cannot be alone around men in the dark –_

Here I had snorted, for how many times had I been out in the garden with Rake at night, or listened to one of Jester's ballads when the black sky was laden with stars?

_– and that reason,_ she had continued, completely ignoring me,_ is that people do things in the dark that they would ordinarily never think to do._ _Under the cover of darkness,_ _people will act in ways they never usually act, and say things they would not normally say. Darkness can make an enemy of a most trusted friend. Promise me you will remember this, Jane._

At that point, Theodore's voice had sounded from the practice yard, and I had immediately jumped up, kissed my mother on the cheek, and fled as quickly as I could. I had fought extra hard at the dummy that day, eager to rid myself of the lingering embarrassment.

But I had not forgotten what she had said. _Under the cover of darkness, people will say things they would not normally say…._ The entire conversation Gunther and I had been having for the past twenty minutes had been comprised of things we would not normally say; or, at least, things we would not say to each other – though, if Gunther would not say it to me, then he probably would not say it to anyone. I was the closest thing he had to a friend, and we were undoubtedly rivals.

It made me wonder... had he ever had a real friend before? Someone he would confess his father's schemes to without the cover of darkness? I certainly had friends I would call sweet, but it was never a word that had been linked to Gunther before in my mind. Had I called him sweet simply because there were several feet of utter blackness between him and me? If we were standing in the bright light of day, would I have ever called him anything other than one of my typical insulting names? Would he have shared a single detail about one of his father's money-making ploys? Would we ever let our constant guards slip enough to be talking about something that did not involve the other of us failing at some knightly duty?

No. No, of course not.

"Jane?"

My head snapped up, and I recalled that Gunther had asked me a question. I opened my mouth to lie, to say that I was not sad.

But I shut it again without a sound. _Darkness can make an enemy of a most trusted friend._ Could that also be true the opposite way? Could darkness make an enemy – a rival – into a… friend? Could that be possible?

And if it could, would I lie to a friend?

Taking a deep breath, I poked tentatively at the buried emotion that felt like a festering wound. And then I began to speak, my voice slow and halting.

"It makes me sad because…" I paused for a second, thinking it over before starting again. "Because I have spent years fighting for the right to say what I wish. To not have to stand meekly in a pretty dress with powder covering my freckles; to know more than the art of embroidering flowers and smiling coyly. I am still fighting to not have to be those things, to be more than what is expected of me – to be what Iwant… not what they want. But you – you gladly throw away who you are for what you think they want you to be. You change everything about yourself without a second thought, while I fight every day just to be something more. And it makes me sad that you do not value yourself at all. That you throw it all away." I stared, unseeing, at the lavender blanket, my fingers playing with the fringed hem. "I guess that is why I have always disliked you so much. The things that matter to you are so very different from the things that matter to me."

Gunther let a minute or two of strained silence pass before he spoke.

"I thought you disliked me because you thought I was a biscuit weevil." His voice was soft, and lacking the laughter I had been expecting.

I shrugged automatically before realizing how foolish that was – of course he could not see me in the darkness. "That too, I suppose."

We were both quiet once again. Time stretched on and on; it was like staring into a bottomless pit that twirled down into forever. The minutes seemed to slink by as if they were embarrassed to be wasted in silence.

After an excruciating and undeterminable amount of time had passed, Gunther spoke again.

"Do you really think that…" he trailed off, his voice not exactly tentative; but much closer to that feeling than to his usual smug tone. "…Would everyone really like me more if I acted like myself?"

"I cannot imagine why they would not," I said, keeping my words impassive so as not to offend him. I was not sure exactly why we were saying things like this, things so utterly vulnerable, but that did not really matter. What mattered was that this was my chance to turn an enemy into a friend, flipping my mother's words on their head – because I truly did not want Gunther as a rival for the rest of my life. Sir Theodore had supposed that, as the years passed and we matured, our petty dislike towards each other would disintegrate… and it had, to a certain degree. We could (mostly) work together to accomplish the tasks he set to us – but everything else had just gotten worse. Even simply being around Gunther usually made the pit of my stomach writhe with anger and discomfort. That any one person could cause such discomposure made me uneasy.

"I guess I could be a little bit nicer," he conceded after a moment, his blankets rustling as he shifted in the darkness.

I frowned; sure I had heard him wrong. Yes, perhaps the darkness did make people act in strange ways, but for Gunther to say something like that? What had happened to him always believing that he was in the right? "So…" I said, my eyebrows lowering even more in confusion, "do you mean… that you will keep being this pleasant?"

Gunther said nothing in reply. I did not want that awful silence to descend once more, so I continued. "Because, you know, if you did… it would be so wonderful." I paused, frowning as I thought over what had just poured out of my mouth. Why did it feel like a confession, like I had just bared my soul to him? Obviously I would want him to act kinder. Anyone would. Saying something like that should not cause me to stare intently at his shape in the blackness, searching for any hint of an answer.

"It would only work if you were pleasant as well," he murmured after a bit.

I deliberated for a second before nodding an assent he could not see. "I suppose you are right. An argument does require at least two to work."

Silence hovered between us. I wondered in frustration why this silence with Gunther was so uncomfortable when Jester and I could sit together without talking almost indefinitely. I guessed that it was because, with Jester, it never felt like there were unseen things in the air, lingering as if waiting for the chance to appear. And, also, Jester almost always had an instrument or juggling balls with him; basically his entire occupation at the Castle was ridding us of awkward silences that could easily be filled with a tuneful ballad or (not so funny) joke.

"So, Jane. Truce?" Gunther said eventually.

I almost wanted to snort an incredulous laugh. Though a truce was something along the lines of what I had envisioned, assigning it that word seemed beyond ridiculous. A truce? Between Gunther and I? What about the past four years? Would we just forget about the history of hatred that bound us together? Would we pretend that being around each other did not force bitter ire to rise in our throats?

Suddenly, this idea of ours sounded utterly ludicrous.

"I take it your silence means 'no,'" Gunther said. Though his voice had its traditional layer of apathy on top, that indifference seemed to be covering a hint of insecurity.

He wanted this, I realized – I knew it as surely as if he had screamed for the world to hear. Normally he was not nearly so easy to read (I wondered if that was also the fault of the darkness, that we let our voices tell so much about our emotions, since our faces could not) but right there, right then, he was barely bothering to hide his thoughts. His walls were down, as they had been perhaps only once or twice before, and I could see everything as clearly as I could in the brightest light of day.

Gunther wanted this. He wanted this truce – perhaps he thought it would improve him in Sir Theodore's eyes, perhaps simply because he was tired of our constant bickering. Or… perhaps… just maybe… he was wondering what it was like to be friends with someone – or, at the very least, not enemies. I had already assumed that he had never had a close friend, a true friend who would listen no matter what he said, and smile when they saw him no matter how well he had done at practice that day. Did I really have any right to take away the chance he was risking his ever-present walls of distain and self-protection for?

Words that appeared from some unknown place welled up in my throat, so many that they pushed past my silence and curled around my tongue, stumbling out my mouth with more venom than the conversation really warranted.

"I did not mean 'no;' not at all. I was simply thinking if a truce between us could ever work – and it can. We can make it happen, Gunther. Squires should never work against each other, especially since, one day, we will fight together. We could very well die together. One day, our lives will be in each other's hands, and all we do is quarrel – yes, a truce is the perfect idea." I finished and inhaled deeply, as I had rushed my speech all out in a single breath.

"You mean… you agree? Because, you know, if you do not… we could just go back to bickering. "

I was, as if reading Gunther's voice had become a talent of mine in the past five minutes, nearly positive that he was hardly daring to hope.

"I agree, Gunther. Truce," I said firmly. Some inkling in the back of my mind muttered that I would regret this (and very much so) in not too long a time, but I ignored that. Could it really hurt so much to try? If it failed, (as it undoubtedly would) we would simply go back to how we acted before, and no harm would come of it. But if it worked…

There was a smile in his voice when he replied. "Champion. We ought to shake hands on it, I suppose, but I hardly think that we could find each other in the dark. A promise would do just as well, anyways."

"Yes," I said. "It will work just fine." I took a deep, calming breath, told myself no harm could come of this arrangement, ridiculous as it may be, and began. "On my honor as a knight, I swear to you, Gunther Breech, that I will do everything in my power to be a true comrade to you and to cease with any petty insults."

"And, I, Gunther Breech, on my honor as a knight, swear the same to you, Jane Turnkey."

I let out a breathless laugh. I felt strangely liberated, as if I had been freed from something – which was foolish, of course. There really was not any chance this could ever work… though I could not help but think why not. If we were the both of us trying, then why should this not carry out exactly as planned?

I lay back down again, finally noticing that my side was aching from sitting up for so long. Rearranging my arm so it was in a more comfortable position, I found myself grinning.

"Watch us get into a fight tomorrow morning," Gunther whispered, a grin similar to mine flickering behind the cynical statement.

My own smile widened. "Have you no faith in a knight's word?"

He laughed, not a snicker, but a deep rich laugh that sounded warm and not at all unappealing. Hearing it, I wished I could see his face as well – I could barely imagine how beautifully his smoky eyes would gleam while he was laughing like that. "Well, it certainly will be a challenge," he said, the laugh lingering in his unaffected voice.

I turned my head so I was looking at where I knew him to be in the darkness, and found a satisfied smile lurking on my lips. "I do so love a challenge," I said.

He laughed once again, more at ease than I had ever seen him before. "Not me. The easier, the better."

"With that mindset, you will not last an hour," I grinned, just as relaxed as he was. The second the words were out of my mouth, I wondered if he would be offended by them, but his manner remained as light as before. Did that mean… perhaps… this was more than an absurd delusion the two of us were sharing in? Surely it was too ludicrous to work; and even more ludicrous of me to hope it would.

"We will just have to wait and see," he replied easily, his form shifting in the blackness so that he was lying down as well, his chin propped up on his hand and his elbow resting on a pillow.

Smiling absently, I thought about how the air seemed lighter somehow, all the tension from before completely gone. I wondered vaguely if, like the dark, laughter also had power.

The silence that then continued on for the next several minutes was comfortable. It was not like the other silences at all, which felt almost as spiky as Rake's rosebushes in their painfulness. It seemed just as unforced and amiable as it did with Jester – though Jester and I rarely sat together in the dark without speaking for long stretches of time; he would always pull out his lute or tug a funny story out of the uncharted depths of his mind rather than let us sit in silence.

After a while of sinking in that sweet quietness, we finally reached a reasonable time to fall asleep, and so Gunther and I murmured our goodnights.

We did not drift off right away, though. In fact, I had the sneaking suspicion that, despite not being able to see his face in the darkness, Gunther spent a number of minutes simply grinning at nothing, just the same as me.

__________

I have had nightmares before – but everyone has them, and they do not really mean anything. After that awful night when I had saved Lavinia from the maze, wolves featured in my dreams nightly for several weeks, but what did that mean? That I was afraid of wolves? As if I did not already know that. And those dreams where Dragon was shot down by catapults, or stabbed through the eye, (his only vulnerable spot) those were perfectly reasonable as well. Everyone has nightmares of losing those they love.

But I did not have a nightmare that night; my sleep was much too deep to allow for dreams at all. In fact, considering how heavily I was sleeping, it was surprising that I woke to just the sound of my name being mumbled.

"No, Jane…"

My eyes cracked open at the words and I sat up automatically, the stinging discomfort in my arm and side causing my breath to come hissing through my teeth in a painful exhale. Pepper's brew had obviously worn off while I was sleeping.

"What?" I asked, my confusion showing in my sleep-slurred voice. It was still night; only faint specks of light trailed through the shutters covering Lavinia's window.

I glanced around, Theodore's training not allowing me to remain unaware for any length of time. After rubbing the sleep from my eyes and giving them a moment to adjust to the lack of sufficient light, my gaze settled on Gunther where he curled on his pallet. The sheets – yanked onto the makeshift mattress hastily, and a bit unsuccessfully, as Gunther had been the one to put them on – were tangled tightly around his hips, as if he had been tossing all night.

Turning away from him carefully so as not to jostle my wounds, I looked down at Lavinia. She was just as dead to the world as Gunther was, her round face appearing even younger in sleep. I smiled absently and drew the blankets up from where they had slipped off her small shoulder.

"Jane, do not… Jane, no!"

I whipped around, gritting my teeth at the instant flare of pain in my side, and stared at Gunther. He was shifting restlessly, the sheets getting even more enmeshed around him. His hands were fisted in his pillow, his face lined with anxiety, but his eyes were still shut tight.

"Gunther?" I murmured questioningly, suddenly not quite sure if he was asleep or not. He did not reply, just rolled over to his side and mumbled something unintelligible. I watched him for a second longer, but he did nothing else notable, so I slipped back beneath the warm quilt with a shiver.

But, just as I let my eyes fall shut once more, I heard my name again, still muttered in that distressed, agitated voice. I shot up again, ignoring the clamor my side put up at the abrupt movement, and swung my legs over the side of Lavinia's bed.

"Gunther, you stupid dung-weevil, wake up!" I hissed; the words touched with more concern than anger.

The only response I got was the urgent rustling of his sheets. I peered at him, watching his fists tighten even more on the pillow.

Just as I resolved to tune him out and go back to bed, Gunther let out a strange soft sound. I froze, sure that I had imagined it, but he did it again – that small noise that sounded almost like a sob, or a moan, or something that was equally frightening to hear from him.

"Gunther?" I asked softly.

He was mumbling indistinctly, writhing away from the sheets wrapped around his struggling form as if he thought they intended to strangle him.

I bit my lip, unsure what to do – and then he made that sobbing noise again and it was decided for me. As if there were slim sturdy strings attached to my insides that tugged me to him, I found myself stumbling down to sit on his pallet, my pain barely a wisp of a thought next to his.

"Gunther, wake up," I whispered, reluctant to touch him when he was still tossing so fretfully.

When that got no reaction, I said it louder, infusing it with the decisive tone Pepper had used on me at dinner. I did not have nearly as much luck with it as Pepper had; Gunther gave no sign of having heard me, just rolled over on his side so he was facing my way.

I let out the brief huff of a sigh, casting a lukewarm scowl at him.

He began to mumble again, one of his hands loosening from the pillow to pluck at the sheets swathed around him, and I leaned forward, curious as to what he was saying. Getting nearer did not appear to be necessary, though, because he was growing louder and louder – and it was promptly very easy to hear him.

"Oh God no…" he was saying, despair sitting in the garbled words. "No, no, no!" He let out that awful sobbing sound again, and it yanked at something in me, something I had buried deep a long, long time ago; back when I had realized I would never need maternal instincts as a knight.

"Oh, Gunther," I said, the protective feeling rising high in my throat and making swallowing almost painful. Without meaning to, I found my hand reaching out to him, my fingers trembling just the tiniest bit. I was going to push his disheveled hair off his forehead, I guess – I suppose that is what I meant to do. But my hand never made it farther than the first brush against his heated temple.

In a burst of unexpected speed, Gunther's eyes flew open and he grabbed me and shoved me against the mattress, his grip punishing on my shoulders (thank the saints he was not grabbing my broken arm), his body efficiently pinning me down. His face was inches from mine, his teeth bared in a feral growl, and his eyes – oh, lord, his eyes – I could hardly believe I had been admiring them just that afternoon, because now they were dark and bottomless and cloudy with savage brutality.

I had occasionally wondered, after a hard day's training, if I would ever actually be able to kill someone when we went to war; I had always told myself I would deal with that when I came to it, but right then and there, with that murderous gleam in his eyes, I knew that Gunther would be able to.

After a second, confused recognition crossed his face, and he looked down at me with horror. "Jane?" he asked faintly. "What – what happened? You – you were dead, and… the arrow… Jane – Jane, the arrow, what happened?!"

Silently trying to convince my heart to restart, I attempted to unravel his jumbled sentence; muddled as it was by the sleep that I could see still hung heavy in his mind. "What… what do you mean, dead?" I asked finally, wetting my lips with a tongue that seemed drier than any of the deserts Sir Theodore sometimes spoke of.

"You… you were dead – I saw! The arrow hit you… hit you… right here –" his trembling fingers fumbled on my neck, pressing gently against the jugular vein, "And you – you screamed… oh, God, it was awful – and then… you – you fell…"

I shook my head weakly, still not quite able to shake off the trembling residing in my limbs; for a second, I had actually believed he was going to kill me. "Gunther… I think you were having a nightmare. There was no arrow. I am alive."

He looked down at me, his eyes wild and much too large for his face, and let out a shaky laugh. "Alive," he whispered, and there was so much hanging on that word that it seemed almost like a prayer. "Alive," he repeated, tracing the vein in my neck with the tip of his finger as if to assure himself that it was still intact.

"It was just a dream," I said.

"Just a dream," Gunther agreed absently, his attention focused on the shadowed area beneath my jaw line where my pulse pounded a bit too quickly. He leaned over me and placed a finger on the spot, feeling my heartbeat against his skin, probably noticing how it increased at his touch. "Alive," he whispered; so quietly I was barely sure if that was what he had really said.

After a minute, his hands shifted, gently smoothing over the shoulders he had been gripping so tightly only a moment ago. He rearranged the cloth of my sling and straightened my shirt, his dark gaze concentrated completely on his task.

"Er… Gunther?" I asked after a bit; the awkwardness of his warm body pressing down on mine was finally getting to be too much, even if his touch _was_ sending little shivers skittering down my spine as he trailed his fingers down my stomach, smoothing out the creases in my shirt.

"Hmm?"

"Would you please get off me?"

He glanced up from where he was running a finger along the bump created by the gauze about my waist and stared at me blankly. "What?"

"Get off me!"

"Oh – of course." He slid off me, yanking me up into a sitting position none too gently. "I was just… making sure I had not hurt you. You should not touch me when I am sleeping, you know," he muttered; glancing away from me, out at the small rays of light coming from between the shutters.

"Why ever not? You just should not have attacked me! All I did was tap your forehead!" I said grumpily, rubbing at the ache in my side.

"You could have said my name!" he glared, completely ignoring the bit about him attacking me.

"I did! Multiple times! But you were too thick-headed to hear it!"

Gunther snorted at that, crossing his arms and turning away. "Would you please get off my bed so I can get through the day tomorrow on more than an hour of sleep?" he asked snidely.

"I would be glad to," I huffed, pushing off the uncomfortable pallet with my good arm. I made it to the edge of the mattress without incident, but then my foot caught on one of the tangled sheets Gunther had thrown off earlier, and, for perhaps the tenth time that night, I found myself heading down to meet the unyielding stone floor.

"Only _you_ could find something to trip on in two and a half feet of flat floor," Gunther muttered, instantly there to catch me and pull me hard against his chest. I scowled up at him, but did not bother to give him any other response – he had, after all, saved me from yet another encounter with the freezing stone. Carefully stepping over the balled up sheet, Gunther laid me down in Lavinia's bed – his gentleness in doing so completely at odds with his dark expression – and yanked the covers up to my chin.

"I could have tucked myself in," I said, raising my chin stubbornly at him, trying not to sigh in relief at the warmth the thick quilt provided.

"Of course," he said, sarcasm thoroughly soaked into the reply, brief as it was.

He stood there for a second, just staring at me, his hands hovering awkwardly at his sides. I could tell he did not want to go back to his miserable pallet, and, for some strange reason, I was not sure I wanted him to either. So, instead, he stood, and looked down at me, and I looked up at him, and if felt as if the world was holding its breath. Finally, (or had it only been a few seconds?) his roughened finger reached out and stroked quickly down the length of my cheek. He mumbled something and then swiftly opened the door out into the hallway. He was halfway through it before I managed a question.

"Wait… where are you going?" I asked, hoping he could not hear the weakness in my voice that I could.

He paused; his hand still on the knob, and spoke without looking at me. "I have to go to the privy."

"Oh," I said articulately, absently brushing a finger against the cheek that was still tingling from his callused touch.

And then he was gone, out of the door, off in the darkness to the privy.

Or, at least, that was where he had said he was going; but a privy trip does not take an hour, and I waited for him at least that long before finally succumbing to a restless sleep.


	9. Once Again, My Title Is Too Long – Sorry

**Disclaimer:** God, does anyone ever even read these anymore? Ergh. Well, for those of you who still do, I'm not Martin Baynton. Surprising as that may seem.

**Notes:** IT'S A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE! I've updated! And I am really REALLY (majorly) sorry it's taken so long. It's been almost ten months now, I think, and that is just soooo not cool in every way physically possible. I will try to never let this happen again.

Thank you SO much for reviewing, though, and sticking with me on this! Reviews are what get me through the writer's block (and the laziness...) And I want you guys to know that no matter how long I go between updates, I will not let this story die. You deserve better than that :)

On another note, I went back and reread the beginning chappies of this story, and the way I use contractions bugs me so much I'm going back, editing, and reposting them so they're not suckish.

Okay, what else... Oh yes! I'm upping Jane and Gunther's ages by one year. Sorry, I know this is disruptive, but them being fourteen and nearly sixteen just won't work for some of the later plotlines. So, Jane is fifteen, Gunther's getting close to seventeen.

Also, I am in desperate need of a beta! This chapter took so long partly because I had a really hard time editing it and trying to keep everyone in character. I have a feeling later chapters will be similar, so if you guys would be willing to beta (or know someone who'd be willing to) please PM me!

One last thing - I will now be keeping updates on this story (and any others I might start) on my profile. So if you want to know what's up, (or why I STILL haven't updated) check my profile! It will say :)

So, yeah. You know what cool people do? They review.

* * *

Chapter 9.

Does Anyone Else Think This Weekend Has Been A Little TOO Eventful?

* * *

I awoke the next morning with two thoughts occupying my mind.

The first; that I now knew exactly what Sir Ivon meant when he spoke of having ale-head – I had that same feeling that my entire body had been squished through a tube much too small for it, the sour taste lingering on my tongue, and the pounding headache that Ivon had always cited as the only reasons to limit the amount of ale you inhaled in one sitting.

The second; that the Her Royal Highness, Princess Lavinia Pernilla Kippernook of Kippernia, had absolutely the largest eyes I had ever seen.

And as they were only an inch from my face, that meant not only were quite sizable, they were two gigantic brown worlds that hovered just before my eyes.

"G-good morning, Your Little Majesty," I said, immediately clapping a precautionary hand against my heart to assure myself that it still beat.

She grinned at me. "Good morning, Jane. Do your owies still hurt?"

I gave her a pained smile, not mentioning that the fact that she was kneeling almost on top of one of those 'owies.' "I think I could safely say…" I sucked in a sharp breath as her bony little knee shifted several inches and moved from 'almost on top of' to 'smack dab in the middle of,' "that they hurt a great deal – Princess, if you could please move the tiniest bit–"

She instantly leaped off me; such apology in her sweet (huge) brown eyes that I was almost tempted to tell her she could sit on whatever part of me she wanted, even if it was on the verge of falling off.

"Oh, Jane, I am so sorry!" Lavinia's voice was high and distressed, and she watched anxiously as I placed a tentative hand on my side to make sure there was not any unseemly blood spurting out from beneath the bandage.

"It is fine, Princess." I looked up, comfortably confident that I would not bleed to death anytime soon, and glanced about her room. "Where is your brother? And," I said, eyeing the pallet still occupying the Princess's floor, "where is Gunther, for that matter?"

"I am right here."

My head shot up, and, sure enough, there was Gunther, leaning insouciantly against the doorframe with his arms folded across his chest. I blinked intelligently at him, and then smiled carefully, not sure what expression to adopt after the night before. Questions rose in a rippling wave – where had he gone? Why had he left? I wondered uncomfortably just how awkward today's conversations would be after a night like that. "Good morning," I said, my voice cautious.

He gave me a dubious glance. "You only say that because you have not heard the news yet."

"Oh no. What has happened?" I asked; rising into a sitting position and coughing to cover up the unavoidable gasp of pain the movement caused.

"The Prince was chasing a rat around the garden with a stick because he said he wanted Pepper to make rat stew for him –"

I repressed an incredulous eye roll; Lavinia let out a giggle.

"– and, while doing so, he crushed the gardener's prized tomato plant."

"Oh dear," I said, picturing Rake's favorite tomato plant strewn across the garden, bright chunks of smashed tomato cluttering the ground. "Is Rake –"

"Having a breakdown in the middle of the garden as we speak."

"Oh my." I rubbed absently at the pain beginning in my temples and rose unsteadily. "I suppose I should go down and –"

"You are not going anywhere until you have some of Pepper's tea," Gunther interrupted, shaking his head as I took a few excruciating steps.

"But… Smithy said I would be able to walk today – and I feel fine! Really! I do!" I protested, coming to an ungainly halt in front of Gunther.

"I do not think she is telling the truth, Gunther," Lavinia whispered loudly, sending him a meaningful look.

Gunther submitted me to a searing glance that began at my bare feet and traveled up to the stubborn expression on my face. "I do not think so either, Princess," he said flatly. "Jane, you do not look at all well. Look how unsteady you are on your feet – and you are so pale. Even paler than normal."

I shook my head in denial, which was a bad idea, as it destroyed whatever sense of equilibrium I still had.

Swaying precariously, I objected in a voice soaked with desperation and no small amount of pain. "But – but… what about Rake? And I still have to help with the children today, and Lavinia has not taken her bath yet, and –" I stumbled backwards, and Gunther took hold of my shoulders and steered me back to the bed.

"You can help with the children, today, Jane, but not before you have some of that tea," he said firmly.

"But –"

"This is not up for discussion, Jane," he interrupted in a hard voice.

I could not cross my arms defiantly with just the one arm, so I simply glared up at him, resentment sinking into every pore. "Gunther, I do not think I heard you correctly. Did you just presume to order me about? Obviously, you have forgotten that we were both given this assignment, _together_ –" I bit back my next words, abruptly remembering our absurd truce from the night before, and contented myself instead with the darkest look I could manage.

"I have not forgotten, Jane," Gunther said frankly, pulling away a chair lingering by Lavinia's door and plunking down on it so we were at eye level. "I was just sure that, if you were in your right mind –"

"I _am_ in my right mind!"

Gunther quelled my arguments with a severe look. "If you were in your right mind," he continued, "you would put your health above Rake's feelings. And as to the Princess's bath –"

Gunther rose as I glanced at the Princess in question, who was watching Gunther and I bat our words back and forth as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.

Sticking his head out of the door, Gunther yelled for a maid. One came hurrying immediately, obviously loath to deal with Gunther's anger if she dawdled.

"Yes, sir?" she asked, bobbing her head deferentially.

"The Princess needs to bathe," he said curtly. "See to it."

"Of course, sir." She curtsied to me. "Milady."

I blushed at the use of the address I hated so, looking away as she took Lavinia's hand and led her from the room. I normally avoided the maids simply because they refused to call me by anything other than my much-despised title.

A second passed in silence as Gunther watched them go down the hallway.

"You could be nicer to the maids, you know," I muttered to him, staring down at the leg I was swinging absently.

"And you could be nicer to yourself," he said, sitting down again. "Is it really so awful to wait half an hour so that your entire body does not ache?

I said nothing, just continued examining my leg. Did he have to sit so close to me like that?

"It will keep, Jane," Gunther said. I was sure he was looking at me – it felt as if his eyes were burning a hole straight through my skin and down to the feelings beneath – but I refused to glance up at him to verify it. "Rake, the garden, Cuthbert; all of it will keep. Well… except the rat. It was clever enough to disappear down a hole in the ensuing chaos."

I smiled a little bit at the thought.

"Now, are you going to be stubborn and demand to go help anyway, or will you wait for just a little while so I do not have to deal with those pathetic expressions you make every time your side is jostled?"

My head whipped up, an insult ready on my tongue, but he was looking at me with patience and something bordering on understanding. He really was too close, though; I could almost count the thick black eyelashes adorning his cloud-gray eyes. His knees brushed against mine just the slightest bit, but the heat that seemed to transfer from him to me would make you think that the entire lengths of our legs were pressed together. He held my gaze, a banked fire simmering somewhere at the back of his stormy eyes.

In the silence, I could recall the night before with sudden clarity I was not sure I really wanted. The elation I had felt at our truce remained, but it was dulled by the sobering light of day. Just one meaningful conversation did not transform an enemy to a friend (whether it took place in the dark or not) and it occurred to me with a bitter pang that perhaps nothing had truly changed. Perhaps Gunther and I were still rivals. I opened my mouth to ask – if he had meant what he had said, if last night had meant something to him; and if so why he had left? Did he still want a truce? But my questions lodged in my throat, and eventually I just said, "I suppose I could wait for some of that tea."

"Champion," Gunther said, standing and heading out the door with a loping stride. "I will fetch you some."

"Just make sure Pepper puts honey in it to cover up the taste," I called after him.

...

The honey, despite my dearest hope, did not help at all. The tea tasted (if possible) even worse than it had the night before; I barely managed to choke down the entire cup, and I probably would not have finished it if Gunther were not hovering over me with crossed arms and a menacing look.

"Now you just have to wait twenty minutes for it to start working," Gunther said once I had drained the last disgusting drop and set the mug on Lavinia's night table.

"What? You did not say anything about waiting!" I scowled, hating the absolute feeling of helplessness being injured forced upon me. I had always thought the hardest thing about being a knight would be the necessity of hurting others, but now I wondered if it would also be getting wounded myself – would I always have to hobble around after each battle, afraid to exert myself and reopen wounds? It was just so frustrating.

"Well, of course you have to wait," Gunther said, frowning at me. "There is no purpose going down the stairs if the tea has not set in yet. I would just have to carry you again."

My scowl blackened at the thought. His carrying me had been _almost_ acceptable yesterday (only because of my injuries, of course) but I doubted there was any way I could tolerate it today – he was right, however, that it would be pointless to walk down the stairs until the tea could begin to work. Still, though… "Waiting. For twenty minutes. Just sitting on this bed and doing absolutely nothing."

"I could get you some embroidery, if you like," Gunther offered, that wretched smirk of his tugging at the corner of his mouth.

I narrowed my eyes at him, silently imagining him as the practice dummy; and then I pictured I was shoving my just-sharpened dragon sword into his non-existent heart.

Then I wondered absently if Mother had been right; that being a knight really did introduce violence into everyday life in an appalling way. I had never had mental imaginings like that when I was training to be a Lady-in-Waiting – or perhaps I had, and they had only been less specific.

"I would rather jump off a cliff," I said, still glaring at him. "Besides, how would I ever sew with a broken arm?"

He shrugged, still smirking as if he knew exactly what violence I had been pretending to heap upon his head. I gave him one last glower and then glanced away. Once again I had that sinking feeling that nothing seemed to have changed – after that whole truce business, we were still bickering.

I finally convinced myself to mention it – but suddenly it dawned on me that perhaps, even if I could manage to bring it up, Gunther did not wish to speak of last night. We had said so many heartfelt things that simply did not match up against the stark realism of day, and perhaps he just wanted to forget any of that conversation had ever happened. The idea of wanting to forget our exchanged words made something soft and wishful within me cringe in dread.

"You would be wasted on embroidery, actually," Gunther said after a minute. I turned to look back at him; he was cocking his head to the side thoughtfully, his fingers tapping absently on the chair arms. "Being a Lady-in-Waiting… you were meant for something better than that."

I raised my eyebrows in sudden surprise. Perhaps last night _had_ changed things between us? "Is that… almost a compliment?" I asked a bit hopefully.

His thoughtful demeanor was swiped away without a trace and replaced with a scowl. "Of course not. It was a mere observation – one that was a bit more pleasant than mine normally are."

Why had I thought a few words ever could have affected anything? Glancing down, my next words were bitten with sharp self-deprecation. "Of course not. You would rather die a painful death than be caught complimenting me, would you not?"

"It was not a compliment," he muttered quite grumpily, not at all answering me as he crossed his arms and fixed Lavinia's shutters with a glare that they had done nothing to deserve.

"Fine, I get it," I snapped. "I know you would never compliment me." But not more than twelve hours ago he had; or had he? Had I only imagined him saying such nice things? With a resolute breath, I decided to put it all from my mind. Stewing over it would not help me whatsoever.

Glancing back at Gunther, I saw he was rising from his chair.

"What – are you leaving?" I asked, a bit caught off guard that he was abandoning me to myself for the second time in the past half-day. I hated the idea of having to watch him walk away, again, unable to follow.

"No, of course not," Gunther said, casting me a look that seemed to doubt my sanity. I thought accusingly that he had not seemed to mind leaving last night, but then I erased the idea as if it had never been – it sounded too much like a lover's quarrel. And besides, had I not just decided to stop thinking so much?

"I am just getting rid of this mattress," he continued, kicking said pallet a little harder than was really necessary to show his point. "Damned thing is filled with lumps. Worst night I ever had." He hefted the mattress into his arms as if it were an empty sack and not stuffed to bulging with straw.

"I did not sleep so well either," I said absently, itching at the skin beneath my bandage. Smithy had said the wound would hurt, but he had never mentioned it would itch as if it were a fleabite; ever since I risen this morning, I had not been able to keep my fingers from scratching at my side, no matter how much pain it caused.

"You? What have you to complain of? You slept on a feather mattress!" Gunther exclaimed, his voice losing volume as he disappeared into the hallway and gaining it again as he returned without the pallet. Judging by the thump I had heard, he had simply dumped it on the floor and considered the problem solved.

"Well, yes, but I still could not sleep after…" I trailed off, my fingers freezing where they scratched at my skin as I realized what I had been about to say – '…after you left'. After Gunther left? What did that sound like? _Oh, Gunther, without you, I could barely sleep… please never leave me again. I love you._ And while I was being such a foolish little girl, why not quit being a squire completely and go back to training as a Lady-in-Waiting?

"After what?" Gunther asked softly, his eyes lingering on my face.

"After the tea wore off," I said abruptly, my voice adopting a harsh facet as I gestured to the mug of tea I had just finished. _Put it all from your mind, Jane._

"Oh." He sounded almost disappointed, as if he had hoped I was going to say something else – _after you left_ – but his voice was back to a brisk businesslike tone when he spoke his next words. "Well, Pepper has made buckets of this brew, so whenever it starts hurting again, just say as much."

I nodded, glancing away from the scene he made; he was once again leaning against the doorway. It was something he had a habit of doing, and I sometimes had the niggling thought that he knew he looked good while doing so, and that was why he did it. It certainly would not surprise me; Gunther had always known how handsome he was, which was part of why he was so irritating most of the time. Self-confidence was a good thing to have – but too much of it could only ever annoy, and Gunther most definitely had an abundance of it in reference to his looks. That was how he could look composed and smug with a thin coating of dust and sweat, while I only ever looked dirty.

After a moment, I turned my thoughts away from Gunther's appearance and onto the dreaded question of what the adults would think upon their return. "I wonder what they will say?" I murmured, the question mostly rhetorical.

"What who will say?" Gunther asked, beginning to pace across the room, from Lavinia's bed to the doorway and back.

I had not really expected him to say anything, but I answered anyway. "The King and Queen – and Sir Theodore, of course. When they see my arm, what will they think? If I cannot even baby-sit two children without injuring myself, what will happen when I have to direct entire groups of men in battle? And the men will listen even less than Cuthbert. They will not easily respect a female knight."

Gunther paused in his pacing and took a tulip from the vase on Lavinia's bedside table, twisting the stem in his long fingers. He watched in an almost detached manner as his fingers began to pluck the petals off one by one. I was reminded suddenly of catching Jester doing the same thing nearly a year ago, but I was quite sure that Jester had been playing a game of 'loves me, loves me not,' whereas Gunther just had busy fingers. If his hands were not occupied, he would fidget and act generally even more annoying that usual. "Daisies are very soft," he murmured vaguely, brushing the last petal with a fingertip before gently pinching it off.

"Not a daisy, Gunther," I said automatically, glancing at the flower in his hand. "Those are tulips."

"Really? Are you sure?" Gunther frowned at the now naked stem, then down at the petals littering the ground.

"Yes. Daisies are the white ones with many petals and yellow centers."

"Oh. Those ones make me sneeze," Gunther said, setting the pathetic stem on the bedside table. "Actually…" he muttered, leaning down to look at the other tulips arranged in the vase, "all flowers make me sneeze." True to his words, his nose passed an inch too close to the flowers and he let loose a sneeze.

Straightening up, he glared at the tulips. "I hate flowers," he grumbled under his breath, before turning to glance at me.

"Do not worry, Jane," he said, a wry smile hiding at the corners of his mouth. "Even if the men you command do not respect you right away, they will quickly enough. You are good at forcing respect into people."

With that ambiguous complement – or insult? – he left the room.

I stared after him; sure my confusion was completely obvious on my face. I had the sour thought that 'putting it all from my mind' was getting harder with every obscure statement that slipped from Gunther's lips.

After a second, Gunther stuck his head back in the room, an exasperated scowl furrowing his brow. "Are you coming, or not?" he asked. "The tea should have set in by now."

I rose to my feet unsteadily. "Er, of course." Stumbling just the tiniest bit, my legs not quite used to the exercise, I walked out of Lavinia's room. My arm had only the slightest ache and my side barely hurt at all, both of which I took to be good signs.

"Alright, I can do this," I said confidently, walking past Gunther to where the stairs began.

"By all means, go ahead," Gunther said with a mocking bow, gesturing to the first stair.

I glared at him and then stepped down onto the first step, placing a cautious hand on the railing beside me.

"Champion. Now you only have six flights left," Gunther said with a smile.

I ignored him and continued down the stairs, making sure that the only hint of my weakness was the pace I moved at. Though I wished it would seem as if I were invulnerable, I was not foolish enough to remove my hand from the railing, and luckily Gunther did not mention it.

It was slow work, but at least I was headed down instead of up. Finally though, when I was halfway through the second to last flight, I had to stop for a minute. My breath was not as steady as I would like, and my legs were beginning to tremble. The tea covered up the pain in my side, but I knew it would reappear soon enough if I did not drink more of the foul stuff.

"Jane?"

I grunted dismissively at Gunther, keeping my hand firmly around the railing in case my legs decided to give beneath me. "I am fine. I just need a second."

Gunther nodded, but for all his talk, his face was colored with a hint of worry.

I took a couple deep, calming breaths, and then set off again. However, five steps later, I had to pause again; my hand shook where it gripped the railing.

"Jane…?"

I shook my head at Gunther and closed my eyes, searching for some inner strength. I could barely believe that all it took was some dismal injuries to conquer me. Knights had to endure things like this all the time, and here I was, totally defeated. Where was that iron will that people knew me for? Jester (in one of his more flamboyant moods) had once jokingly called me a warrior goddess with steel and dragon flame in place of the normal innards, and my father did not call me his 'stubborn dear' for nothing. Where was all that strength when I needed it?

"Jane… you should most likely sit down," Gunther said.

"I am fine. I can do this." I opened my eyes, staring down at the length of stairs before me as if I could shorten the distance I still had to go with pure willpower.

"Honestly, Jane…" Gunther sighed, exasperated, and took another step so he was on the next stair down, facing me. "There is nothing weak in you sitting for a moment. And if it really matters all that much… I swear I will not tell anyone you did."

I gritted my teeth, my hand beginning to cramp from its stranglehold on the rough wooden railing. "No. I can do this."

Gunther glowered at me, crossing his arms and tilting his chin up. I wonder if he realized he had adopted my usual obstinate 'you-cannot-make-me' pose.

"I will not move unless you sit down for a minute," he said, biting the words out in a completely adamant tone.

I scowled at him, removing my clenching fingers from the balustrade and flexing my aching knuckles. "And what would you do in my place?" I demanded. "Let yourself be coddled? No one fusses over knights; they expect them to –"

Losing my balance, I toppled forward; the hand that should have been gripping the railing placed defiantly on my hip. But before I even had time to register that my face was heading to meet the floor _again_, Gunther caught me, one arm a solid bar around my waist and the other circling my shoulders.

"– handle it," I finished, a tremor touching the words. For just a second, we stood pressed together like that – in a position any self-respecting romantic would deem an embrace, his arms tight around me, the distance between my lips and his nearing non-existent.

But the measly inch or two separating our mouths was not anywhere near my thoughts. In fact, all I could think of was that I was so _so_ weak, and pitiful, and every other trait I despised all tangled into one miserable being. How many times had I embarrassed myself lately? And in front of _Gunther_, no less. Truce or no truce, I could barely stand the idea of depending on someone as much as I had Gunther in the last half day – I could almost taste sickening bile rising at the mortification of it all. I wanted him to think me so much – or at the very least, to realize I was as talented a squire as he – and here I was, giving him every reason not to just refuse to catch me, but to push me down the stairs himself in disgust.

So before he could drop me (for surely he was planning to) I pulled back jerkily –and when Gunther did not relax his hold fast enough for me, I shoved against his chest in an effort to force some space between us. "Dammit, Gunther," I snapped in a shaking voice, immediately going on the defensive, "do you always have to do that?"

"Do what –" he retorted, quashing the flash of confusion that had flitted across his face at my sharp words, " – save you? Oh yes, because you were handling walking down the stairs just _fine_ on your own, Jane!"

I snarled at him, wriggling in the cage of his arms until his grasp loosened enough for me to pull away. Some pushy little honor-driven bit of me was demanding (and quite loudly, too) that I thank him for catching me, but all I could think was that my frailty must repulse him, and I would not inconvenience him by forcing him to hold me any longer. "I _was_ doing just fine!"

"Oh really," he sneered. "Then you can get down the stairs by yourself, Jane. And when you fall and break that pretty little neck of yours, it will be your own fault!"

"Fine!" I growled through clenched teeth. "Go, then!"

"Fine! I will!"

And so he did.

With my scalding scowl burning a hole through his back, he turned and headed down the stairs, his every footstep a scathing insult directed my way. When he finally rounded the corner and passed out of my sight, I sank down onto the stair beneath me, my legs shaking with anger and the last lingering trace of adrenaline from nearly falling.

Then, with the question of balance and self-support out of the way, I found I could do nothing except breathe in heavy, short flurries of air, my head in my one working hand. The rage trickled away in small increments like sand dripping through an hourglass, until I was only left with the feeling that I been utterly ridiculous – not to mention a bit cruel. Gunther had caught me, and I had punished him for it. Was it his fault I was so weak I constantly tripped on nothing? Or that I instantly supposed the worst about him on a regular basis? Perhaps he had not meant to drop me at all. And even if he had, I could have simply backed away – handled it with grace, as my mother always said. _A lady perpetually maintains a poised exterior, Jane… no matter what she feels on the inside._ And that was not unlike something Sir Theodore often said – "Never let your emotions get the better of you, squires. A cool head is a critical part of being a fine knight…" One of the only other rules Theodore had announced more important than this was honesty.

What if I had ruined any chance Gunther and I had ever had to be more than petty rivals?

"So much for our truce," I mumbled to the silence of the shadowed stairway. When my only reply was a soft withered echo, I sighed and lifted my head. Knowing I needed to keep moving, I rose in as steady a manner as my weak legs could handle.

Unsurprisingly, (considering my luck those last couple of days) the stairs had recently been waxed, and one of my feet slid out from underneath me. Though I immediately grabbed hold of the railing – my one good hand choking the life out of the knobbly wood – my knee still smacked the edge of the next stair down with a resounding 'thwack.'

Releasing the balustrade, I flopped myself onto the nearest step. "Ow," I said frankly. There simply seemed to be nothing else to say.

A second later quick steps reverberated up the stairs, the noise seeming to cling to every stone surface it touched. "Are you alright? Did you fall?" Gunther's tense voice asked, following the sound of his footsteps by only moments as he turned the corner.

"No," I said, silently amazed at how swiftly he had gotten here. There was no chance he was worried enough about my wellbeing to wait at the foot of the stairwell where I could not see him – was there?

"No, you did not fall, or no, you are not alright?" he asked as he came to a halt at the base of the stairs, his face angled upward to look at me.

"No, I did not fall," I replied.

"Then what was that awful smacking noise?" he questioned, one eyebrow quirking upwards as he started up the stairs.

"My knee."

"Your knee."

"Yes."

"What did you do, bang it with a hammer?"

"No. It hit the stair."

"Just the stair?"

"Yes."

"You have a loud knee," he muttered as he ambled up the last few steps, his hands shoved into his pockets. When he stood just in front of me, he glanced at my knee as if it would make the whacking noise all on its own.

I really had no reply to that, so we were silent, him standing and me sitting, both staring intently at my knee.

"Thank you," I said finally. The words came startlingly easy.

"For what?" Gunther wondered, looking up from my knee.

I plucked at the coarse cloth of my sling, my eyes fixed on the way the fabric draped over the splint. "For before. For catching me." I glanced up, away from my pathetic arm, up at his face. "You always catch me." And as I considered it, it was true. The embarrassment at how often I had fallen in the past twelve hours or so had not faded, but the thought that Gunther would drop me mostly had. So many times I had stumbled, tripped; nearly tumbled to the floor. And yet, every time, had Gunther not caught me? If he truly hated me, would he always be saving me from the merciless stone time and time again?

He shrugged, his gaze skittering away from mine like a spider from the light.

"And I am sorry," I continued stiltedly. "I should not have gotten so angry. I just –" I glanced away too, at the dreary gray of the castle wall. A poised exterior, Mother had said; a cool head was Theodore's contribution. And honesty, of course.

So since I had already ruined any illusion of poise, I went with the truth. "I hate that I need catching," I said simply. "I hate being weak."

"So do I," he said, his eyes finally meeting mine. His were filled with wisps of unfurling smoke, and I found myself speculating, somewhere at the back of my mind, (where I kept all the rest of my silly frivolities) just exactly what Gunther thought about _my_ eyes. Did he have lists of pretty adjectives to describe them, like I did for his?

"So we still have a truce?" I murmured softly. I held my breath waiting for his answer – the need to know if last night had mattered to him as well was a blazing bonfire within me.

Gunther nodded wordlessly, his eyes still caught up in mine as he raked a hand through his sleep-rumpled hair. Glancing down, away, (how could a simple look make such feelings writhe within me?) I saw an errant green thread on his tunic – the color standing out on the otherwise gray fabric. I unthinkingly reached for it – but my hand stopped halfway between us. It hovered for a second as Gunther glanced from it to the thread.

"May I?" I asked, the words hushed – as if this moment, the answer to this question, had great import.

He swallowed, and when he spoke his voice was husky – gravelly and low. "Yes; yes, of course."

I plucked the thread off, balled it up, and flicked it away.

"We should go," he said after a moment, still with that same throaty rasp. It was a voice made for murmuring secrets, for whispering into ears – soft romantic words, declarations of love. Not Gunther's voice at all.

I nodded, unexplainably shaken up. "Yes – of course; Pepper will be worrying."

He extended a hand to help me up, and I took it. It felt automatic, like picking up a spoon to eat soup or reaching for a candle in the pitch-black of nighttime privy trips. It seemed as if we had done this many times before, had wound our hands together a thousand times over – but then the warmth of his fingers was gone, and I took hold of the balustrade again, and we set off for the garden once more.

...

Gunther had been right. Rake was having a breakdown.

He had plopped himself in the dirt, his legs in a slightly crumpled and quite uncomfortable-looking position. He was bent over the poor tomato plant, his fingers holding up one of the limp green vines. Red tomato juice, looking eerily like seed-filled blood, spattered his arms and legs, and a goopy chunk of tomato decorated the tip of his nose. His lower lip was trembling just the slightest bit; tear tracks cleared paths through the smudges of dirt on his cheeks.

"Rake, I am so sorry," Pepper was saying, her arm looped around him comfortingly.

"This was my grandfather's favorite tomato plant," Rake sniffed.

"Oh, Rake," I said helplessly, watching the scene from behind the carrot rows.

Rake looked up at me, his eyes wet with tears. "You heard?" he asked.

"I heard," I said, stepping carefully over the carrots (the last thing we needed was another garden mishap) and standing next to Rake. Pepper smiled up at me, but then returned to consoling Rake, her high voice soothingly murmuring unintelligible nothings.

After patting Rake's shoulder, I straightened and scanned the garden for Cuthbert – he was sitting at the table the castle staff ate at, his perpetual scowl in place. I sighed and turned towards Gunther. "Stop him if he tries to ruin anything else," I whispered. "I am going to get Rake some water."

Gunther nodded and went to stand by the table. Judging by his expression, he thought this entire situation was ludicrous – and I could not necessarily say I blamed him.

It took only a second to fill a cup for Rake, but while I was working the pump (not so easy one-handed), I heard the thump that heralded Dragon's arrival. Grinning, I hurried to him as quickly as I could manage – I had missed his company for the past day.

"Hello Jane!" Dragon called with a big toothy smile. "How is the babysitting going?"

"It –"

"What happened to your arm?" he exclaimed, his oversized nose abruptly only inches from me as he examined my splint.

"I had a bit of an incident," I said with a grimace, setting the cup of water next to Rake.

"An _incident_?" Dragon turned to Gunther, firelight beginning to simmer in his nostrils. "What did you do to her?" he growled, his immense wing-adorned shoulder blades sliding back as he sank into a predator's crouch.

"It was not me!" Gunther protested, backing away.

"Tell the truth, shortlife – I am not fond of lies," Dragon said, his voice roughened with fire and dangerously soft.

"Dragon, it was not him," I said, exasperated.

"Are you sure?" Dragon asked a bit longingly, raising a claw so that it was at Gunther's throat. "Because if it was –"

"Oh, stop that," I chastened, stepping in between Gunther and the (however unlikely) threat of Dragon. Gunther gave a nearly imperceptible sigh of relief from behind me and began inching out of Dragon's view.

"Who was it then?" Dragon asked, a bit too casually – and if that were not a sign that he was still on the verge of frying someone, his tail was twitching back and forth like a cat about to pounce.

"It was an accident," I said firmly.

"It was Cuthbert." Lavinia's voice rang across the suddenly silent courtyard as she skipped around the corner, her hair bouncing in damp braids.

Dragon's head swiveled around, his eyes fixed on the young prince. "You did this to her?"

Cuthbert gulped.

"Dragon, what did I mean when I said 'accident'?" I demanded. "You cannot torch people for making mistakes."

"Watch me," Dragon rumbled, his teeth clicking shut perilously near to the prince's face.

"You cannot fry Cuthbert, Dragon," Lavinia announced, her skips halting next to Dragon's huge scaly foreleg. "Mama and Daddy would be very grumpy at you. And besides, he would not smell so nice all burnt and crispy."

Meanwhile, Cuthbert had begun slowly retreating. When he was within reach of the kitchen door, he ran for it, the harsh clatter of his feet pounding across the swept stone lingering after he had disappeared.

Dragon growled low in the back of his fire-filled throat at the empty doorway Cuthbert had fled through.

"Behave yourself," I reproved.

Dragon lowered his head back to me, and his expression immediately gentled – though it was flavored with no small amount of guilt.

"Do not even say it," I whispered to him, reaching out my good hand and stroking down the length of his warm nose. "You could not have prevented it. And it does not hurt at all, anyway." I bit my tongue on the lie.

"Here, Jane. Come have your tea," Pepper called from the table. "Rake, you too, dear. A cup of chamomile tea will calm you down."

We crowded around the table, Pepper and Rake on one side and me and Gunther on the other, Dragon curled around us with his head resting on the ground right next to me. Everyone sipped their assorted teas in silence for a minute, but I gulped mine down right away and then rested my hand on Dragon's head ridge, feeling the hard bone plate beneath his scaled skin.

Eventually, Smithy came jogging up to the table, his hair standing up on end as if he had run his fingers through it a couple times in anxiety. Taking a deep breath, he nodded to Gunther and me. "The King and Queen are back," he said, a bit apologetically, as if he knew just how much we did not want to hear that news.

The actual requirement of Kippernia was that each time the king entered or left the castle he was heralded by trumpeters. However, as most of the trumpeters were also employed as stable-hands and pageboys, often they were occupied with something whenever King Caradoc decided to go somewhere – and so usually whoever saw the king's procession first was the one who had to inform everyone. Smithy, it seemed, had gotten stuck with it this time.

"They are about to cross the moat," he said, taking a swallow of Rake's untouched tea before striding in the other direction – presumably to tell the servants.

A second's silence sat in the air as everyone absorbed Smithy's words.

"Well," I mumbled finally, my gaze flicking to Gunther, "I suppose we should –"

"Yes, I guess so," Gunther said resignedly, rising to his feet and steadying me with a warm hand as I stood as well.

We set off for the front gate, Dragon clumping along behind us – and I imagined to myself that not even heading into battle would I feel so filled with dread.


	10. Look, I Have Long Titles, Alright?

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Jane and the Dragon, or any of its characters. But believe me, if I did, I would do the sensible thing and make a second season.

**Notes: **Okay, it's been forever, and we all know it. Over a year, but I feel a little too guilty about it to check just how over. But I have to say, it has been a disastrous year. Some of it was great, don't get me wrong. I discovered low-carb baking and knitting, and now I have tons of beautiful sweaters and I look much better in them. And I met my fabulous boyfriend, and that's been almost a year and two months. So that was the great beginning. But my cat has a heart problem and my grandfather has a brain tumor and can't remember my name and my father has metastasized prostate cancer and they say he probably won't live through the summer – so that all sucks. So, basically, there are many reasons this update took so long. And I apologize for that. I wish those reasons hadn't happened too.

On a lighter note, I think I'm finally back to writing. I'm taking a creative writing class this semester and all of a sudden I'm remembering that I used to live and breathe this stuff. And maybe I don't anymore, but I want to again. Nothing like writing to make you feel you can make a difference!

Also, I just realized, rereading a bit ago, that the cute little bar line dashes I use to separate my sections of writing don't show up on this. It's a tad heartbreaking, thinking y'all reading this saw horrible gaps instead of my usual transition, but I guess I'll just fix it and get over it.

Uh, what else... Oh! Also, I will eventually resolve the beta problem, and thank you to everyone who offered. I'll make sure I get around to talk to you about it.

Also again, I have to say you guys are the best! Sticking with me on this one is amazing, since it's been longer than anyone should have to wait for anything. Every review, a paragraph or even a word, is most appreciated. I don't write for the reviews, but I have to say I do post for them – no point showing it to the world unless the world wants to see it.

Last of all, I'm sorry these notes are such a downer. Normally I try to make them lighthearted because I'm a pretty happy person (flowers, sunshine, all that jazz) but I haven't been feeling it with what I really hope is the crappiest year of my life (I couldn't stand another one of these) going on.

So please please PLEASE review (it's the only reason I bully myself into writing), and I will knit you a sweater with Gunther's face on the front. And when you wear it and no one gets the reference, you can laugh snobbily and mention something about the lower classes these days.

* * *

Chapter 10.

Overextension – And Why Stubborn People Always Manage To Do It

* * *

My mother shrieked when she saw my arm – the rest of the group either gasped, or, in Sir Ivon's case, complained that he could not see anything, what was everyone so interested in? (He was riding behind Sir Theodore, and so had a slightly limited view, considering their height differences.)

Everything happened quickly after that. Immediately, Gunther and I were whisked away to the throne room, where it was demanded of us that we explain everything in minute detail. Mostly the account was left to Gunther – I was sitting on a bench at the long table as Mother inspected my injuries. Every time I stood and tried to assist Gunther, Mother would grab my shoulders, pushing me down once more, and King Caradoc would demand with a mix of concern and insistence that I not overextend myself – and besides, I could not really speak over Jester's long strings of nervous chatter, questions of how much did it hurt, (did I need him to fetch anything?) and finally, apologies that he had not been there for me.

At this, I finally protested, waving away my mother's prodding fingers as she poked at my arm. "Honestly, Jester, what could you possibly have done? You cannot bandage injuries – and you cannot make a cup of tea to save your life."

"I would have been your emotional support, of course!" Jester exclaimed. "Anyone in pain needs a little bit of comfort!"

"I did not need emotional support," I objected. "I had…" I trailed off, my eyes drifting to Gunther, who was standing a few feet in front of me as he elucidated to the King and Theodore just how this disaster had occurred. "…I – well, I was fine."

"Oh, no one with a broken arm is fine," Jester said, rolling his eyes and then smiling at me gently to show he did not really mean it.

I smiled back at him wearily, nudged my mother's fingers away from the bandage bump on my side, and then sighed. I had no Dragon to entertain me, (he had left after saying he was going to "fetch me a present to cheer me up") and with the way Gunther was constantly being interrupted with impatient questions, our tragic tale was taking even longer to explain. It seemed I would be sitting there for a while.

…

Sometime after the hours spent on Gunther's account and a bit before Jester left to collect Cuthbert, Smithy brought me (as well as Gunther, Jester, and my mother by extension) to his forge to make me a plaster cast.

Plopping down on the provided stool, ("Be gentle with yourself, Jane," my mother snapped) I asked Smithy when he had gotten the plaster.

"Gunther delivered it this morning, as I was lighting the forge," the blacksmith said absently, mixing a cup of the white powder in a small bucket half-filled with water.

I looked up at Gunther, who met my gaze evenly. He nodded at me, his head barely dipping, and I smiled in reply; just a shy little smile, but a smile all the same. Relief flooded me that _this_ was the reason Gunther had left last night – to help me, by fetching the plaster as swiftly as he could. Not because he despised my company or no longer wished to speak to me.

Jester held up the strips of sturdy canvas he had just cut and Smithy took them. "Jane, I am going to remove your splint now," the blacksmith said evenly, taking off the cloth sling and placing my arm gently on the table his anvil rested on. I gritted my teeth against the pain as he untied the fabric attaching the thin wood to my arm – and bit my lip to stop a groan when he took the splint away, leaving my arm completely bare. Jester gasped when he saw the expanse of dark bruises spreading across my skin. Mother ran a comforting hand through my tangled hair, her mouth pulled into a sad line. Gunther simply looked away, as if the sight of my pain hurt him as well.

Smithy began by wrapping a soft white cloth around my arm, starting at the end of my elbow and stopping halfway up my palm, leaving a gap for my thumb. Then he glanced up at the spectators, his discerning blue eyes examining each of them in turn. "One of you will need to hold the bone in the proper alignment while I place the plaster strips," he said in a measured tone.

My mother stepped forward, her face set in determination. "I will," she declared rigidly, looking around as if expecting someone to protest a Lady assisting with something so coarse. No one did, of course. The Castle staff joked about Lady Adeline's iron will often, but they were still loathe to displease her – I was the only one stubborn enough to dare.

Smithy nodded, reaching for my arm. "This will hurt, Jane," he murmured softly, and then gripped near my elbow with one hand and next to my wrist with the other. And then, taking a quiet breath, he moved the two pieces of bone so they fit together neatly, sending a vicious agony jerking up my arm.

"Jane!"

"Are you alright?"

"I am fine!" I hissed through gritted teeth.

"You are not fine! You just _squeaked_," Gunther exclaimed, his face taut with worry.

I scowled, breathing in painful lurches. "Knights do not _squeak_."

"Then it is a good thing you are only a squire, or you would have been the first one," Jester muttered.

I knew he was not being uncaring, only that humor was a wall to hide his anxiety, but I still could not help the faint glower I sent his way.

"I am sorry, Jane," Smithy whispered.

I shook my head. "Thank the saints for you, Smithy, or it would not heal and I would never fight again," I mumbled. His eyes met mine, and suddenly I understood what the taciturn blacksmith went through each time he was forced to hurt an animal in order to heal it.

Smithy took another deep breath and told my mother to place her hands in the same spot as his. She did, and he took a step back to dip a piece of canvas into the plaster mixture. Slowly he smoothed it over the cloth, his fingers steady and gentle.

It was slow, painful work – each layer had to dry before another could be put on, and there were five layers. My arm ached from the constant pressure of my mother's resolute hold, and more than once Jester left to bring me some of Pepper's tea; the final time he did this, he returned with an entire pot. I nearly gagged at the sight.

After I let loose another irrepressible groan, Gunther halted in his pacing across the forge and turned to Smithy with a black scowl. "Why is continually pushing down on her broken arm necessary? This is hurting her too much!"

Smithy sighed, rubbing a plastery finger across his furrowed brow. "If the grip in not constant until the plaster dries to its shape, the bone may heal crooked, and eventually have to be re-broken to correct it."

Gunther glanced at me, his expression nearly as miserable as mine, and then began his pacing with renewed fervor.

Jester watched this exchange with a puzzled look, before leaning against Smithy's worktable and turning his attention back to my arm. "This must have been excruciating when it was set," he said, frowning sympathetically at me. "How did you handle the pain?"

"Oh, Jane was fine," Lavinia said, appearing at my mother's elbow. "Gunther held her hand."

Jester's gaze flew to Gunther, his blue-gray eyes widening to the size of Rake's prize cabbages. "What? _You_ did?"

"I was her _emotional support_," Gunther drawled sardonically, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow at Jester.

I spat out the sip of tea I had just taken and glared at Gunther. He only flashed me a quick grin, so charming and playful it made my breath catch in my throat, and then went back to his pacing.

In the following awkward silence, my mother glanced between Gunther and me as if something new and exciting had just occurred to her, Smithy continued as if nothing had been said, and Jester stared at me, stunned.

"You… are jesting – right?" He finally asked no one in particular, his voice a tad desperate.

I coughed.

"Oh no, not at all," Gunther said cheerily. "We leave the jests to you, since you seem to do them so well."

Before I could find something heavy to throw at Gunther, Lavinia spoke, her high voice as merry as ever, completely oblivious to the tension. "Anyways, Jester, Daddy wants you to fetch Cuthbert for him so he can tell him he has been a bad boy."

Jester was silent for a moment longer; his mouth open as his gaze flicked from me to Gunther with despair, waiting for one of us to laugh and say it had all been a joke. After a second, I looked away, not wanting to meet his eyes.

"Er, yes, well then. I had better go get him, I suppose. Um, see you all later," he mumbled, before jogging out of the practice yard with one final glance back at me.

…

No one was quite sure exactly what the King and Queen said to the Prince – but it was barely ten minutes after he had entered the throne room that he came to Gunther and me, apologized for his reckless behavior, and promised that he would never be that irresponsible again. After that, he went to speak with Rake – who he would be working with for the next few days to help restore his garden to its former glory.

Of course, he said all this with the worst attitude he could possibly summon; but he did say it, and that was enough. I was officially impressed with the Majesties' management of him.

The only item of bother after that was what Sir Theodore would have to say about our failure. Even after five years of seeing him daily, I still had no idea what to expect from the old knight – and the lack of knowledge sat like a ponderous rock at the base of my stomach, weighing down my thoughts.

"Do you think he will be very angry?" I asked Gunther apprehensively as we headed up the stairs to the knight's quarters. The cast had dried after an excessive amount of time, I had been forced to retire for a nap during which I did not sleep, and finally we were sent for by Sir Theodore. Every extra minute had given me countless opportunities to think of unpleasant methods of punishment.

Gunther shrugged. Then, looking sideways at me, he commented, "Your walking seems to be much improved."

"Yes. Smithy was right about that, I suppose."

He nodded, and then took a deep breath before rapping his knuckles on the door.

"Come in," Theodore called.

We entered to see Theodore at his desk, with two stools placed in front of it. Guessing what was desired of us, I sank onto one of the stools, and Gunther perched on the edge of the other. We waited anxiously as Theodore set his quill next to his inkwell and looked up at us.

"Well, squires, I have to say that I am quite impressed," he said finally, his bushy moustache pulled into a faint smile.

Gunther and I exchanged looks.

"Even with this unfortunate turn of events, you have behaved admirably. You have assisted each other in your duties, been there for one another when it was required, and still managed to complete the assignment."

I raised my eyebrows, suddenly sure my ears had stopped working properly. "…We have, Sir?"

Theodore nodded. "Indeed. You have shown a level of camaraderie and mutual support that I had not thought you two possessed in regards to each other."

"So… you are not going to punish us?" Gunther asked, confusion written on his furrowed brows.

Theodore shook his head. "No, I am not. Punishing you for an accident, one beyond your control, would be quite unfair."

"But…" I frowned, "it was not beyond our control." Gunther kicked one of my stool legs, a not-so-subtle hint to hush myself, but I continued anyway, ignoring him. "If I had told the Prince to stop –"

"He would not have. Most likely, he would not have ceased unless you picked him up and carried him away."

I opened my mouth once more, but Gunther grabbed my hand and tugged me to my feet, dipped his head at Sir Theodore, and yanked me out onto the balcony.

"Do not look a gift horse in the mouth, Jane," he said, once the solid, thick door was closed and no sound from the balcony would be heard inside the quarters.

"What do you mean?" I asked huffily, slightly miffed by the way he seemed to handle me so thoughtlessly – as if it meant nothing to him, whether or not he reopened all these wounds that seemed to be covering me.

"Oh, just be satisfied with the way something is for once in your life," he muttered, brushing a stray midnight-colored lock from where it clung to the corner of his mouth.

"Not being satisfied is the way you bring about change," I argued.

"Jane, change is not always good," he said, rolling his eyes.

"Change is necessary –"

Gunther placed a finger against my lips, a wry smile twisting up the corner of his mouth as he effectively shushed me.

"You do not actually want to be punished, do you?" he asked.

I shook my head the tiniest bit – my mouth was still blocked by his warm finger.

He removed his hand; abruptly seeming to realize his finger was still resting on my lips. "Then just let it be," he murmured. "Sometimes things are better left the way they are."

He was wrong – I was sure that he was completely and utterly incorrect – and yet I could not for the life of me remember why. Somehow I had managed to forget what I had been going to say, as he was inexplicably leaning closer to me, his head tilted to one side.

"You have a freckle right here, you know," he said vaguely, tapping the corner of my mouth. "Just a small one. You have had it as long as I can remember."

I did not say anything, but then the door we were standing in front of opened, and Sir Theodore came out. Though we jumped apart before he raised his eyes from the paper in his hand, he still appeared surprised to see us standing there.

"…Squires," he said, clearing his throat, "should you not be practicing?"

"How can I?" I asked with a frown. "My arm –"

"Ah yes," he said, glancing at my new cast before heading down the stairs. "How could I have forgotten?"

My fingers absently brushed the corner of my mouth as Gunther and I followed behind him.

After a minute, we stopped in front of the weapons shed, and Theodore bent to retrieve our practice swords.

"Now, this activity may be quite strenuous for you, Jane. Do you believe you are well enough to practice?" he questioned, handing one of the wooden swords to Gunther.

"I will be fine, Sir." My words came out just as I had intended them to – steady and sure, with no hint of that ridiculous weakness that had been plaguing me all day.

Theodore gave me a searching look, the sword still held loosely in his weathered hands. I had the sinking feeling that he was not going to give it to me – that I would sit and study while Gunther practiced, day after day, until my wounds healed and I had lost every knightly skill I possessed.

However, that did not happen. Slowly Theodore extended the wooden handle, and I reached to take it with an internal sigh of relief.

But his fingers stayed tight on the other end of the blade. Confused, I looked up at him.

"I am giving this to you, Squire Jane," he said sternly, "with the understanding that if you feel the slightest bit unwell or unable to practice, you will inform me of it. This is one of the highest forms of trust knights place upon each other – that they will recognize and share with one another physical inabilities. This is not an invitation for you to punish your body for being weak; do you understand?"

I nodded, glancing down again. How was it that everyone seemed to comprehend me so well? "Yes, Sir. I understand."

He released the blade and then led us to the center of the practice yard. "This is a perfect opportunity for both of you to learn left hand technique. When a knight's sword arm is injured," he nodded to me, "they will often have to fight with their opposite hand, and so much be just as adept with it as they are with their dominant hand."

I looked at the rough wood clutched in my left hand and frowned. It felt wrong there, like trying to chop a tree down with a fishing rod. Certain things simply did not go together, and my left hand plus a sword was apparently one of them.

Gunther seemed to be of the same mindset as me, as his sword was receiving a harsh scowl.

"Now, take your stances –"

"Jane! Jane! I have brought your present!"

The three of us glanced up, to where Dragon spiraled above. As he was right beneath the bright autumn sun, it was hard to distinguish his shape except by squinting.

"What is it?" I called, watching him descend, his great wings beating mightily.

"It is a –"

But I needed no answer. As he passed out of the sun's glare, I could see just what present he held so delicately in his massive claws, the present he had declared would "cheer me up."

It was a cow.

A poor, horrified cow who was lowing in a deep, hoarse manner, struggling in Dragon's powerful claws.

"Dragon! What do you think you are _doing_?" I shouted, stepping forward as Dragon set the creature on the ground. It instantly made a break for it, galloping through the open stable door and out through the front barbican, reaching freedom in the fields beyond.

"You! Come back!" Dragon yelled after it. Glancing down at me, he announced reassuringly, "Now, do not worry, Jane, I will get your cow right back!"

He crouched, readying himself to push off the ground, but I immediately grabbed his foreleg. "No, Dragon, _please_ do not! I am fine. I do not need a cow. I am perfectly happy without one, I swear it!"

Dragon lowered his head so we were eye to eye. "Are you sure? Because I would be back with it in a jiffy –"

"No, _really_. It is sweet of you to think of me, but next time, please do not get me something… _alive_. Besides, that poor thing will probably never be the same."

Crushed as he was that his not very well thought out plan had failed, I gave him a one-armed hug and pressed a kiss to his scaly green nose.

"Thank you anyway for the thought, Dragon," I murmured.

"Yes, well, I was thinking since cows always cheer _me_ up…" he trailed off dejectedly.

"It is fine," I smiled. "Just leave the cows _in_ the pastures next time, alright?"

He nodded, flopping himself on the castle wall.

Turning back to Gunther and Theodore, I once again picked up my wooden sword, hoping none of them saw the shuddering breath that resulted from leaning over. "Where were we?" I asked confidently, summoning as much of my usual vigor as I could.

And after ten minutes of basic instruction, Gunther and I were back to sparring, just like usual.

Except for the fact that as the minutes passed, it became obvious neither of us could land a single blow.

"No, no, Squire Gunther, it is the left-hand version of the stroke – not the opposite; and Jane, make sure your hand is positioned correctly on the handle. Gunther, waving your sword up and down will not accomplish anything! Jane, please control the swings – make sure they end before you hit yourself."

"Left hand training, eh?" Sir Ivon asked as he ambled up to us, scratching his head. "How are they doin'?"

"It could be worse," Theodore said, hands on hips as he watched us go at it yet again.

"How," I grunted, jabbing in Gunther's general direction, "could this possibly be any worse?"

Gunther swung so hard he spun halfway around. "If we were holding our swords out handle first?"

"Yes, I suppose."

My lungs were heaving with exertion, but I knew as I swung at Gunther once again that I could not stop now. Already my injuries affected my movements less; I figured that the sooner I readjusted to daily life again, the faster I would heal. And so I had to ignore the spreading ache that had begun about half an hour before in my stomach, and forget about the funny sting in my side each time my torso twisted too far, and disregard every message my exhausted body sent me. I would get through this. I was determined to.

Lifting my sword once more, I slashed forward and nearly clipped Gunther on the ear.

"Watch it," Gunther grumbled, staying out of reach of my flimsy swipes.

"Sorry," I said; or tried to say, but my mouth was not working properly, and instead it came out as a garbled moan. My sword slipped from my sweat-dampened fingers, and suddenly I found myself on my knees, the world spinning dizzily before my eyes.

"Jane!"

Gunther was abruptly right in front of me, his hands clasped tight on my shoulders, his eyes so close to mine I imagined I could see clouds swirling in their depths. "Jane, are you alright?"

"Yes, of course," I said woozily. "I am fine. We should keep going, or we will never get better."

"No, Jane, I think you should rest now," Gunther said worriedly, Dragon's large head peeking over his shoulder.

"Yes, I think so too," Theodore said, also leaning over me. "Can you walk, Squire?"

"Of c-course I can walk," I muttered, my tongue tripping over the words as I attempted to stumble to my feet. I was nearly there when my legs once again buckled beneath me.

Everything began whirling in loopy circles. I was suddenly reminded of dancing at a ball when I was younger; spinning and spinning until the world was nothing but a blur of colors and my head hurt as badly as if it had received a kick from an enraged horse.

Vaguely I heard Dragon's frantic voice echoing in my ears, though I could not discern his words – in fact, I could not quite tell what anyone was saying. Their voices rushed and tumbled together until it all just sounded like a waterfall crashing on stones.

However, clarity returned with a sharp snap at Gunther's suggestion. "…I could carry her, Sir Theodore."

"No no no!" I protested weakly – but it was too late. Sir Theodore had already agreed, and then Gunther was gently scooping me up and heading towards my tower, the wind from Dragon's wing beat above us ruffling his hair.

Still objecting loudly, I squirmed a bit in Gunther's arms; but that hurt, so I stopped. After a moment more of complaining, I noticed the complete and total lack of response I was receiving, and so fell silent.

"Why must you always overwork yourself, Jane? You never ask for help when you need it. Why did you not tell anyone you felt so poorly?" Gunther asked once I was quiet, his footfalls soft stairs on the stairs despite my added weight.

"Because that would be whining," I grumbled grouchily. "And really, I feel fine…"

Gunther snorted.

We continued on, and it was much like it had been when we had climbed the steps up to Lavinia's room – minus her chatter, of course, but with the same oddly comfortable feeling between us. My arm, sore from all the left-hand practice, was looped around Gunther's neck, and when the dizziness returned, bringing reinforcements of nausea and something similar to a migraine, I leaned my head against his shoulder, closed my eyes, and tried simply to breathe.

On the walkway to my tower, we encountered Jester, who was strumming his lute and humming absently. He immediately demanded to know what happened, and after that was explained, ("She overextended herself, like she always does," Gunther said) he insisted on carrying me instead.

"Ha! _You_?" Gunther laughed, the sound sending a deep rumble through his chest – and, by extension, through me. Still chuckling slightly, he began to walk again.

"I bet I could!" Jester snapped, following along behind Gunther.

"I doubt it," Gunther said, amusement in his words. "She is heavy."

"I am not," I mumbled, still with my eyes shut, my face resting on Gunther's soft gray tunic.

"Do not worry; it is pure muscle, Jane," Gunther muttered to me, his breath warm on my forehead. Then I felt him raise his head to look at Jester once more. "Why do we not test this when Jane's safety is not at stake?" he suggested, a smirk sliding into his voice. "I do not think we should trust her wellbeing to your skinny little arms."

At this, Jester burst into a long line of clever insults, which Gunther replied to lazily; as if not Jester's words were not only lies, but falsities completely unworthy of his time.

Their arguing seemed to add to the pounding beat reverberating in my head, and I found myself cringing at each increasingly rude thing they uttered to each other. "Stop it," I murmured to them hoarsely, my eyes squeezed tight, as if the darkness behind my eyelids was the only safe place in the world. "Stop it, both of you."

Neither of them appeared to hear or notice me whatsoever, so I increased my efforts – though the harder I tried to raise my voice, the quieter it seemed to become. I felt like I was sinking down, down, away, and no matter how loud I screamed neither of them would hear me.

Finally, I opened my eyes – searing pain bursting through my head at the sun's bright light – and shifted my head to look up at them. "Would you both just shut up?" I asked, my voice the jagged crash of stone on stone. It was not at all the demand I had hoped it would sound like, and they only looked at me, as surprised as if they had forgotten I was there. Taking a deep breath, I added quietly, "…Please?"

Instantly Gunther's handsome face lost its smirk. "Of course, Jane. We are almost there," he said softly. Vaguely I heard him ask Jester to open my door, and then we were in my room, and Gunther was setting me carefully on my bed.

I wanted to get up, to rise to my feet and prove that I was fine; great… ready for anything; but every inch of me was screaming for rest and besides, I had already abused my body enough for one day. So exhausted that I managed to ignore both Gunther and Jester, I laid down on my back and let my eyes do as they wished; which was to fall closed and stay that way as long as they were able.

The next few hours were less any sort of rational sequence of events as they were a series of random scenes slapped together in a nonsensical manner. People flitted in and out of my room in a constant stream, but Jester and Gunther always remained; Jester sitting near my feet and Gunther at my bedside, arms crossed with a surly expression.

At some point, I awoke from a light doze to hear my mother's voice in the courtyard below. She was shrieking at Sir Theodore, and among her words I could discern: "com_plete_ and total lack of respect for natural healing process; _what_ a perfect method to kill someone;" and, finally; "I have a good mind to _smack_ you with this broom, you idiotic _knight_!"

At this, I turned my head to Jester and begged him to "make her stop, _please_, before Sir Theodore rescinds my apprenticeship!"

Jester nodded and left, and a few minutes after that my mother's high-pitched screeches ceased.

Smithy entered a bit later, bringing with him a cup of some new concoction that the combination of Pepper and him had decided would do me well. It tasted a bit less foul than the tea, but had a strange, bitter aftertaste that left my mouth parched with thirst.

Lavinia came in next, and though I could not really remember her visit, I woke up a little later with eight more furred toys surrounding me than I had started with.

I crossed the line between awake and asleep numerous times, though occasionally I seemed to just sit right on top on the line as well, a foot on either side – neither conscious or unconscious, but a blend of the two. Times like these I could hear people speaking, and found their words insinuating themselves into odd, warped dreams involving people I had never met and yet seemed to know. It was not until the new medicine had time to wear off that I returned to any sense of reality, painful as it might have been. It was hours before I could even discern the time, and once I finally managed to gather myself enough to glance out the window, I saw it was dark; and had been for a while. At this point, people stopped entering and began to leave; the groups of people who were amassing by my bedside slowly dispersed until only Jester and Gunther remained. An hour or two after everyone else had left, a maid entered carrying a chipped mug filled to the brim with the new medicine.

"If I may ask," she murmured softly to Jester, gently setting the mug on my bedside table and brushing her hands on her skirt as all maids seemed to have a habit of doing, "how was Milady injured?

"Oh, get her _out_ of here," I growled at Gunther. The maid sent me a glance, and then huffed, heading for the door.

"Yes, go 'milady' someone else, will you?" I muttered in her wake, turning into my pillow.

Gunther made a strange choking noise, and glancing at him, I saw he was repressing laughter. Or attempting to, at least. I scowled at him as well, and then at the mug set innocently on the small table. "I will not drink that," I said firmly.

Instantly Gunther's amusement disappeared into determination. "Now, Jane…" he said, sounding so much like a wheedling Pepper that I found my resolve folding into a grin – "do not be stupid…"

"Please, Jane," Jester said with a tired smile. "Just drink it. You know it will help."

I glanced at the mug, my eyes tracing the textured space where a chunk was missing. Biting my lip absently, I weighed the benefits of giving in against the costs. The costs won. "No," I said resolutely. "I will not."

Jester and Gunther both opened their mouths at the same time, but they were interrupted by the weary rumble of Dragon from the window. They both jumped, apparently (in his silence) having forgotten he was there. "Jane, please," Dragon said. "I know it means you cannot think straight, but at least then you do not hurt. I…" he trailed off, cleared his throat, and began again – "I do not want you to be in pain, Jane."

I looked at him, his eyes brighter in the dark room than even the several burning candles, and finally reached for the mug. At his immediate smile I found a returning one emerging on my face, though mine was rather a bit smaller – and then I downed the viscous liquid. Minutes later I descended into darkness once more.

Pepper came in some undeterminable amount of time later, lugging an entire tray of food with her. After shooing out my two hovering, under-qualified nursemaids, (as well as closing the window Dragon's head had been poking through) she forced me to drink several glasses of water in quick succession ("Cannot have you getting dehydrated, now can we?"); and after that she stuffed a countless variety of foods down my throat.

"Do you realize, petal, that you have not eaten all day?" she asked, bustling about my room, tidying and lighting a fire in the empty grate.

"Really?" I asked drowsily.

"Yes. I thought that you had, simply because you usually eat as much as you can whenever possible… but I suppose you have been drinking so much tea your stomach thought it was full!"

"That sounds reasonable," I mumbled, snuggling against my pillow.

"You have a nice rest, petal, and hopefully you will feel better in the morning," Pepper said, patting my hand and exiting with her tray.

"You can go in now," I heard her say softly to someone outside my door, and then Gunther walked in; I could tell because no one else's footsteps were quite as soft as his. Even Jester (as light as he was on his feet) sounded like a clunking elephant compared to Gunther when he wished to be silent. I could hardly remember that day so long ago when my footwork had been better than his.

"Do you feel better?" Gunther asked, coming to stand next to my bedside.

I nodded, yawning. "Where is Jester?" I wondered sleepily.

Gunther's mouth pulled in a strange expression. "Why?"

"I do not know. It just seems as if somehow you two were arguing outside my door for a while, but whenever it was loud enough for me to hear, Pepper would shush you…." I frowned, suddenly unsure this had actually happened. Had I dreamed the two voices outside, one rough and low and the other higher sounding and nearing aggressive? Nearly ninety percent of all the things I had thought and said in the past bed-ridden hours had been nonsensical – Smithy said this was a combination of lack of sleep and not enough food, but mostly this new medicine.

"Yes, we were," Gunther replied, after a bit.

"I was just wondering if he is still outside, waiting to argue with you again," I murmured, my eyes wandering over his face. He looked almost as exhausted as I was, and years older than just the day before.

He shook his head. "No, he went to bed."

"What were you arguing about?"

"Oh – nothing."

"Uh-huh," I said softly, closing my eyes once more.

After a silence – one long enough that I thought Gunther had left – he spoke again. "Jane?"

"Hmm?"

"Would you mind if I sat down?"

I shook my head and the mattress dipped as Gunther sat. The room returned to silence once more, except for the tiny rustling sound of his fingers playing with the blanket folds. I could feel myself perched on that middle line again, drifting towards sleep whilst remaining awake, and almost as if I were someone else I could hear my breathing deepen and slow.

"Are you asleep?" Gunther asked, so soft it was almost a whisper. The idea of responding sounded silly to my drugged and fatigued mind, so I said nothing and only shifted my head the smallest bit on the pillow. "I suppose so," he said. He let out a tiny sigh and stood. I did not hear him move for minutes after that as I slipped closer to the world of dreams. Eventually he reached forward and brushed my hair off my forehead with gentle fingers, muttering a goodnight. Quiet steps moved away, and I finally roused myself enough to mumble his name.

"Gunther?"

"Yes?" he asked. I had not bothered to open my eyes, so I was not sure if he was faced towards me or not.

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"All of it… everything – the last day. For catching me… you always catch me." I forced my eyes slightly open, revealing a slit of my room and Gunther's back where he stood turned away. His head was angled downward, the hair I had always imagined as soft but never been brave enough to verify rumpled against the back of his neck.

"You are welcome," he said a long pause later, softly and without looking at me – and then he left. The door shut quietly, and I knew he was gone.

After closing my eyes once more, I heard Dragon bump open the shutters with his nose. "Jane?" he whispered.

"Dragon?" I asked, my voice muddled.

"Pepper said I should not bother you. Am I bothering you?" He wondered anxiously, his head sticking in through my window, smoky warm breath billowing on my blankets.

"You never bother me," I said, nearly incoherent.

"Champion. Well, I just wanted to say good night, I guess."

"Good night, Dragon," I murmured.

"Good night, Jane."

"...Dragon?"

"Yes?"

"I love you."

"I love you too, Jane. Sleep well."


	11. Loooong Title Agaaain

**Disclaimer:** IT ISN'T MINE OKAY I GET IT YOU GET IT LET IT GO.

**Notes:** Can it be? An update after less than a year? It is! Hallelujah! I have been writing a ton, trying to get this down, and I'm sorta hoping that this story will be wrapped up in not too much more time or chapters. (No guarantees, though; I do have lots of ideas floating around that still need to make it in!)

Anyways, thank you guys so SO much for the support. It's been a tough time, but writing for you guys makes it so much better! You're all wonderful! Pats on the back all around!

(To MiscPurpleEccentric94: I am fervently sorry for the misspelling of Gunther's name. For a while my computer "corrected" it to Gunter and I had to change it back each time, but obviously I missed some! Thank you for noticing, and I will try to fix that lickety-split like!)

Also, beyond the support (which is fabulously helpful and kind!) REVIEWS MAKE MY LIFE. PLEASE REVIEW. I've gone beyond all attempts at being sophisticated and/or classy about this, so I just beg you to PLEASE review. I love advice. I didn't used to, but I got less stupid, and now I do. If there's something you don't like, then this is a golden opportunity to complain! Life doesn't send you many of those, but I'm tossing one your way right now. And if you do like, a single review is such an encouraging thing. Every review means the world to me! So please. _Please._

**And now, an interlude:** I've been getting lots of requests for Jane and Gunther to finally man up (or woman up, as the case may be) and kiss each other already, so here's something for y'all (insert wherever you see fit):

_"I LOVE YOU," Gunther exclaimed, suddenly grasping Jane's hand to his heart. "PLEASE JANE, IT'S BEEN KILLING ME. TELL ME YOU FEEL THE SAME WAY!"_

_"The hell?" Jane said, yanking her hand back. "Gunther, you raving nutjob, Laura's been planning this nice lead up to our romance, you can't go spoil it by acting like some lunatic! People get burned at the stake for things like that in this century!"_

_"Oh, screw her, she's just a fanfiction author. This here is true love! Can't WE decide when we want to kiss? There've been tons of times that would have made a fabulous first kiss! What does she know?"_

_"I'm sure she has something planned! Be patient, man!"_

_"But I want to kiss you SO BAD."_

_"I KNOW. I've wanted to kiss you for years – you know, that long, womanly hair has always turned me on – but you gotta wait for it! IT'LL COME."_

Straight from the mouth of Jane herself, guys. Don't worry, it's a comin' :)

* * *

Chapter 11.

The Sorrows of a Bedridden Knight-to-be

* * *

I did not get out of bed the next day, or the day after that, or even the next one. It was more than a week before they would let me inch out of bed and place my desperate feet to the cold floor. I found myself missing the chilled stone of early mornings as I never could have imagined.

Every other day Pepper and Mother would change the bandages around my side, and after I complained that it hardly seemed necessary one time too many, Pepper enlisted Sir Theodore to tell me stories of knights who had been careless of wounds, not cleaned them properly – and died.

In addition, Lavinia came in and played on my bed. Sometimes she created elaborate battle scenes in which the bunnies slew scores upon scores of the kitties; but other times she sat quietly and read, eyebrows pinched in fascination. I began to see that she was not so childish as she seemed – the entire Castle encouraged her youthful imaginings, and so they had continued, but she never wore the dragon wings Smithy had crafted for her anymore, and she read the politics of neighboring countries as if they captivated her. One time she sat explaining the job of a specific ambassador to me, her high voice strong with knowledge. Ten minutes into her explanation, I recognized it from a text I had read only the year before, well into my training as an advanced squire. I was astonished little Lavinia was growing into such a clever girl, and so stealthily.

Rake stopped by every day as well and brought me a different type of something each time – a flower one day, a few springs of rosemary the next, a rosy apple. I marveled at the tales he could tell about each one. He was also a splendid storyteller, in his shy honest way, about the prince's ventures in repairing the vegetable section of the garden. Smithy would come in after Rake, though less for the visit and more to see how I was doing. After the second day, he took me off the medicine that fragmented my brain into bits and pieces and returned me to the willowbark tea. I never would have thought this would be a relief, but in the choice between a happy tongue and an operational head I settled for the latter. He announced on the third day that I was showing marked improvements, which I took to mean I was ready to train, and everyone else took to mean I was possibly ready to read a book as long as it was soothing material.

One day, through my heavy door (which everyone wrongfully thought blocked outside sound), I heard Smithy saying quietly to Jester that the only reason it had ever descended into such disaster was because I had pushed it too far. The injuries in themselves were not too dreadful, though they did need to be kept clean – but by ignoring them, I had forced them to become far worse. At this, I had turned my head into my pillow, overwhelmed by shame. If someone attacked the kingdom while I was in this state and unable to assist with defenses, I would put the entire castle in danger simply through my own foolish stubbornness.

I told this to Pepper that evening, in a fit of guilt, my good hand clenched in a fist of disheveled red hair. She stopped, placing my supper tray on the grooved windowsill and crossing her arms. For some reason I had never quite figured out, even after rather a lot of time spent musing on it, this always made her appear taller – even a tad menacing, which was ridiculous for someone of her frame and height. "You are doing it again," she said firmly. "Is it so wrong to forgive yourself – and let it go?"

I opened my mouth to protest, and she gave me such a look my words withered to a crumble in my throat. "Think on it, Jane," she stated sharply. "And imagine, if Gunther were to say the same thing, what a scolding you would send his way."

I thought on it. And quickly realized she was right. So I let it go – or tried to. When it seemed not to be working, Jester was always there with his juggling stones and a cheery smile. He would come in for hours each day, practicing his acts and writing new ballads, many of them about fire-haired Lady Knights who sustained intense injuries and carried on anyhow. I found myself laughing as I never had before; not because they were any more clever or funny than they had been, but because they were a piece of the outside world I was barred from.

I settled into a routine, and just as Jester was part of that routine, Gunther was as well. At a certain time each day, Jester would pack up his juggling stones and puppets, and Gunther would enter with the readings Theodore had assigned us both. Sometimes they met in the doorway, one going and one coming, and as they brushed by each other they would instantaneously scowl.

As I waved a goodbye to Jester, I would smile a hello to Gunther. It was different than the greeting smile I gave everyone else, and though my mind skimmed over just why this might be so, I came to think of it as "Gunther's smile" – which, of course, was absurd, as it was on my face and was obviously my smile. But it seemed special anyways, and so I indulged in my mental silliness. At first it was hardly a smile, and Gunther would barely nod in return, but as the days passed our faces hid less. He eventually started smiling as well, genuine and mockery-free, in a smile that would have made him look carefree if I did not know better. Sometimes I wondered absently why he had spent so many years sneering when his smiles looked like that.

He would come in carrying books, technical and written by knights long dead, set them on my bedside table with a "thunk", and drag a chair over. "Sir Theodore said we ought to study the Battle of the Long Halls today," he would say, or something of the like. I sorted through the books first; enjoying the one action I was still permitted, even if it was the meager flipping of a few thin pages. Though Gunther never mentioned anything on the subject, I knew he was being kind by allowing me to leaf through the books myself. If he had handled the weighty tomes instead, we certainly would have finished in a timelier manner, as I did tend to linger on certain pages; brushing a fingernail over each painstakingly inscribed word and savoring the only ounce of knighthood I could touch without my mother shrieking. My sword, which I usually kept by my bedside at all times, had been hidden somewhere out of my reach after I attempted to polish it (conveniently the very same day my mother was at the marketplace, though of course there was no connection between the two) and was found out by Pepper, who had snatched it away in a huff and given me twice the amount of willowbark tea than was completely necessary that evening. As I choked down the extra cups, my not-so-subtle punishment, I was informed that Mother had hidden my precious sword and threatened any who revealed its location to me with laundry duty for the entire next season. My interrogations of Jester, Smithy, and Rake came too late, for, with eyes perfectly innocent and wide enough to reflect their fear of Lady Turnkey, they all claimed they had no idea where it was – "honest, Jane!"

And so Gunther and the books were my one remaining relic of the knighthood I felt grew farther away with each successive sunset. Because of this, the complex mix of ambition and pride, the determination and sheer longing that I felt towards my long-held dream of speaking that oath and receiving my shield, were beginning to be inextricably linked with Gunther. They always had been in a way, but more in a petty, at the back of my mind snicker; that someday I would become a knight and in doing so, prove Gunther wrong. But now, it seemed something we would accomplish together.

However, this hardly prevented the bickering – but it was different than before, harmless almost, a cat with sheathed claws batting at a toy. Speaking had become a battle no more.

Conversing like this, I discovered odds and ends about him that I had never cared to know before, and slowly, these bits and pieces began to weave themselves into the cloth that was Gunther Breech. I realized he was many-faceted in a way I had never considered before. How could I possibly have spent hours next to Gunther every day for the past five years without knowing something as simple as his favorite color and that he hated black truffles?

One afternoon (the last day I was confined entirely to bed) we both sat, me propped up on pillows and clutching the treasured _Knight's Tale_ (the diary of the original knight from the early days of Kippernia) in my functional arm, him slumped sloppily in the chair next to the bed.

"What?" I demanded of him incredulously.

"I think Adelric was an ass," he repeated, glowering.

"But – he was the first knight! He laid down the code of honor!"

Gunther fiddled with his wrist absently, still with the black look. "Yes, I know. So Sir Theodore always says, and Sir Ivon, and the King, and you… But, still. He was an indecisive leader and when he finally got around to making decisions, they were indecisive too, and resulted in a good many men dying."

I shook my head in utter disbelief. "Well, no man is perfect, and it is hardly a battle if men are not lost. He went on to teach some of the best knights this country has ever seen –"

"Yes, yes, Fulbright, Hatcher, Langham," he interrupted. "I have read it too. But that was later. What about when he was in the thick of it? He failed to organize his troops into any sort of coherent force, and they were smashed again and again. The only reason they kept going is because the man could make a damn good speech, and he promised them bread he did not have."

"Well, but, you do not understand! He was so brave – think of the Kipper Skirmish, and –"

Gunther interjected again, leaning back in the rickety chair (which hardly looked as if it could handle the strain) and continuing to rub his left wrist in an irritated manner. "He was foolhardy, Jane, not brave. By refusing to wait for the training of the peasants, he rushed into battle unprepared and doomed them all to death. How is that forgivable?"

I found myself completely speechless, dumbfounded at his reasoning and unable to think of a response. Though Gunther's opinion was hardly treason, it felt as if it somehow must be. After all, Adelric was the sole reason I had wished to be a knight, back in those days so long ago. Then, I had been just a pinch of a child, clasping his scratched and slanted words to my chest with hovering dreams dying to leap.

Finally I shook my head and began again. "You are being ridiculous. Every battle is a series of decisions, each necessary to a successful outcome. Not all of them can be decided flawlessly! Do you think you could do better than he, if you were an untrained village man attempting to put together a peasant army?"

Gunther scowled yet again, now rotating his left wrist in little circles with the other hand. "This is not a question of what I would do."

I growled a little, attempting to shove off a few of my strangling blankets. "That simply means you would do the same. Besides, he knew it was not ideal, and that he could have done better – but he had the good sense to be impressed with his success, unlikely as it was, regardless!"

Gunther laughed heartily, surprising me in the dim fading light of my room. The laugh passed throughout his entire body, even as he still played with his wrist, and I found myself watching his frank mirth with a touch of fascination. "As if you would have, Jane! You will blame yourself for every man lost in battle, for every mistimed strike, for every little mistake. It would be hypocritical to tell someone else they should not!"

I glared at him, letting out a cross sigh – though really he did look rather handsome with that wide grin spread across his face like jam on toast. "I do not claim to be perfect either, Gunther! – And whatever is wrong with your wrist? You have been poking at it for the past ten minutes!" I snapped.

He looked down at said wrist, his mouth curling in annoyance. "Oh. I was sparring with Sir Ivon, and after all these years with you as my sparring partner I forget how savage he is. He smacked me right here," he placed a finger on the bony ball of his wrist, "and it hurts like the devil. I will have a nasty bruise soon, no doubt, and he will find it hilarious."

I sighed, this one pronouncedly less vexed, and reached forward to gently wiggle his sleeve up. It no longer hurt to lean over, but I was still forbidden from doing so, so I pulled his arm towards me with a little tug. "It is becoming a nasty bruise," I agreed, turning his hand this way and that to catch the light on the darkening purple blotches. Slowly I held his fingers and moved his wrist in a circle as he had been doing, seeing if his movement was restricted at all. But when he winced slightly, I stopped directly and quickly glanced up, muttering an apology. He shook his head wordlessly, and I let my eyes dawdle across his face, curious why Gunther, though used to whining about extra duties (but really he had not done that for quite a while, now that I considered it) rarely complained of physical pain. He had always done so, if I thought back to those early days so long ago and our first spars.

After a second I returned to examining his hands. His fingers were callused and strong, as I remembered them being, and on the back of his hand the marks left by my fingernails (from when he had helped Smithy set my bone), had nearly disappeared. I swiped my thumb over their crescent shapes, wiping off a smudge of dirt. "Sorry about those as well," I whispered, reluctantly setting his hand down on the blanket and peering into his face again. He shook his head once more.

We sat in silence, both looking at each other. But before I reverted to that list of pretty adjectives labeled "Gunther" I kept at the back of my mind, I wondered with a twinge of alarm what he must think of me. My hair was a mess, as usual, but as it was only brushed once a day, by my mother in the mornings, it was growing to a matted nest faster than was typical. By the time Gunther arrived mid-afternoon, it was always a bushy mass of snarls. My fingernails still had curves of dirt under them from before the incident; and even my tunic had been replaced by a spare billowy nightshift of my father's whilst my mother repaired the holes left by the mace ball.

Yet my appearance had never bothered me before. Yes, I liked being clean, as most people seem to – but certainly not enough to prevent me from completing any messy duties, or having a romping good time with Dragon. I could not understand why it should now, now that I was forced to remain the cleanest I had been in… well, years, if anyone was willing to be honest. After all, the only reason my fingernails had not been attacked and scrubbed to the point of falling off by my mother was because that could possibly shift and cause harm to my healing bone. Avoiding only that abused skin residing beneath my cast, she had taken a bar of soap and scoured every inch of me, muttering all the while, leaving my cheeks rubbed spotless and rosy with irritation. Leaning back against a pillow, draped in picturesque ivory blankets, I looked more the blushing Lady-in-Waiting than perhaps I ever would again, even with my tangled tresses. And to add to it all, the much too large tunic my father wore to bed appeared far more feminine than my training clothes or armor ever could – the superfluous metal-scaled skirt I wore to remind anyone who cared I was still female was trumped by the delicate golden embroidery gracing the deep neckline of the navy shift.

Suddenly acutely uncomfortable, I turned my gaze to the blanket laid over my legs. I tried to tuck a chunk of hair that was tumbling forward behind my ear, but it would not fit. A repressed tense growl sat locked in my throat. My eyes traveled uncomfortably around the room, avoiding the chair containing Gunther, settling on the small table plunked at my bedside. The hairbrush perched innocently in its perennial place there, and after a moment's consideration I grabbed it and began to yank it through my knotted tangle of red. It was painful, of course. It was always painful, trying to accomplish anything with my hair. But I kept at it, and a minute later I managed to formulate a question for Gunther.

"Well, if you did not become a knight because of Adelric and his code of honor, then why?"

Gunther gave me a sharp glance, his eyes abruptly careful. "My personal reasons or my obligations?"

"Both," I said, wrenching the brush with heavy jerks.

"Well – the glory, obviously," he remarked after a bit. "Knights are the most highly respected members of a court beyond the nobility – and the royalty, of course."

"Is that a personal reason or an obligation?" I asked, watching the brush strain to fight its way through another unkempt curl.

"Both."

"Both?"

"It brings more power to my family."

"And?"

"And what?" he retorted, crossing his arms.

"That is only an obligation," I murmured softly.

"And?"

"You said it was both. A personal reason as well." I glanced up at him, and our eyes caught. My fingers were still clenched tight around the brush handle, my body completely motionless.

His gaze was searing, but as I met it evenly it slowly dulled back down to a murky gray. Looking away, his mouth flinched with displeasure. But then he stared back at me, and as his eyes meandered over my face something he discovered there convinced him to open his mouth.

"I had an obligation to my father," he began slowly, looking away from me again, down at the bedspread. "…Or so he said. He decided that, as a knight, I could provide valuable resources. And that it would bring honor to him; a merchant with a knight for a son can hardly be ignored. If I did well, the King would possibly confer a title on me, and that would provide me opportunities to affect the course of the kingdom." He exhaled quietly, reaching to rearrange the crumples in my blanket. "But truly… the reason I wanted to become a knight – it was because I did not wish to follow his path. People are not fond of my family, I know. They need us, for the items we bring to them that they can find nowhere else – but they do not like us. You shake your head, Jane, but you are not stupid. You know it is so."

I stopped, realizing I had indeed been shaking my head.

Gunther looked at me, his bleak eyes saying more than his stunted words ever could, and I felt a tugging desire within to gently clasp the hand on my bedspread. I knew he must have no idea what his face showed after all these days spent alone together, for if he had he surely would have smirked and changed the subject. "The Breech family does not need another merchant," he finished quietly, dropping the corner of the coverlet he had been squeezing in his fist.

I nodded, wordless. I do not know if I intended for him to believe that I was acknowledging his statement or agreeing with it, but it did not seem to matter, as he had already turned to the next section in the _Knight's Tale_ and started reading aloud. His voice seemed monotonous, tame without its usual intonations.

I half-listened, placing the brush back in its spot. "…I am sorry," I pushed out after a while, breaking in on a detail of battle plans. Apologies came easier now, after the truce, or my injuries – or just the fact that if I offended him I would be alone for the hours each day we spent studying – but it was never easy for me to admit to any mistakes.

"For what?" Gunther asked, keeping his page with a weather-beaten thumb and glancing up.

"For before. I – do not want to intrude."

"Intrude on what?" he said blandly.

I glowered, knowing he would make me say just exactly what I meant. "You do not like to say things about yourself, Gunther. And I do not want to try and force you to."

"You force me to do nothing, Jane," he said, opening the book again.

"Champion. Because I would never want to," I said firmly.

Gunther looked up again, and our eyes tangled. I imagined there was some emotion hidden in his face that I had never seen there before, buried beneath the layers of smug confidence, some shade of pink on his cheekbones that was unaccustomed to its position. Even his eyes looked somehow softer, as if they were the gray down of a nestled gosling. He opened his mouth, about to say something, and I found myself leaning forward the tiniest bit, my fingers curled around the blanket hem. There was a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach, and it swept around in a most agitated way.

"Jane, I –"

"Yes?" I asked, abruptly eager.

"I…" he trailed off, swallowed, and then snatched the book from where it was sliding off his lap. I watched him, my dirty fingernails digging into the clean covers, still with that odd anticipation or anxiety thumping around my insides. "Well… thank you," he said finally. He took a breath, flicked a bit of mud off his boot, and rearranged the book before meeting my gaze again. His face was calm now; whatever feeling I was sure I had seen either wiped away or non-existent. "No one has ever said anything of the like to me before."

"Oh," I said intelligently, hiding my disappointment (disappointment in what? Had he not just added another "thank you" to the so short list passed between us? What had I to complain of?) by glancing down. My cheeks felt disagreeably warm, and the fluttering expectant feeling began to subside. "You are welcome."

Gunther returned to reading after a short pause, his long form bent over the book, but I could not concentrate. My eyes continued to dart over his face in a jerky, almost nervous manner. After a while, coming to a stop in the reading, he glanced up again.

"Why are you looking at me like that, Jane?" he asked softly.

"I – I… Well." I took a hurried breath. Had all the air in the room soared out the window? No, impossible – I had closed the shutters so Dragon would not butt his fairly large head in whilst we were studying.

"Yes?" he queried, leaning forward a tad, closing the book.

"Gunther, I – have been wondering." I was not exactly sure what I was saying, what I had been wondering; the words seemed to well from some deep place inside and it frightened me; that I might say anything, or everything, or perhaps even mention that I liked the length his hair had grown to and thought his eyelashes were most becoming.

"Wondering when you can start training again?" he prompted, after my uncomfortably long pause. As my eyes were still darting across his features, I noticed he appeared concerned, that pucker between his brows beginning to deepen.

"Er, that as well, actually…"

"Smithy says the arm will take longer, but whenever the plaster comes off and you can run up and down the stairs a few times I assume you can resume practice."

"Oh, good," I said, huffing out another breath.

"Jane, are you alright?" Gunther asked. After a moment he reached forward, his hand gently skimming my forehead. I started a bit in surprise, trying to trace when he had started doing such little things, those that both nursemaids and mothers tended to be fond of. Vaguely I remembered Smithy pulling aside all my recurring visitors and telling them to monitor me for possible signs of infection, fever being one of them. Somehow I never supposed Gunther would have listened. "Your skin seems hot. Do you feel feverish?"

"No, I just…"

"Just?"

I inhaled with a gulp. The sudden rush of air made me realize I had been holding my breath since his fingers brushed my heated temple."…I just wanted to… thank you. I hope it is not irritating – spending some much time trapped inside with me when you need not." I knew somehow that this was not what I had been wanting to say, that those words had been shoved back down into the secret place within, where I let all my unspoken and unanalyzed thoughts fester in a writhing pit. The pinching fear I felt towards the prospect of following in my mother's footsteps did not compare to some of the aching terrors buried there. Floating near the fetid top was the idea from a week ago, of Gunther's lips pressing against mine.

"Jane…"

I looked up at him, a movement that brought my face abruptly very close to his, as he had shifted forward on the feeble chair. It moaned in protest as he held the position, his exhales fluttering only centimeters from my mouth. A quick wave of panic overtook me, cinching around my stomach with a twist as I considered the proximity of his lips and the thought that if I sat up only a small amount more, my mouth would graze his. The idea instantly terrified me.

"Er, yes?" I asked; my fingers nervously clenched around the hem of my father's nightshift, a coiled feeling of apprehension or some other unidentifiable emotion wound tight within me.

"Spending time with you does not irritate me," he murmured, his voice low.

"That is new," I whispered.

He smiled, a wry halfling of a smile. "Our truce, perhaps?"

I nodded, swallowing. "You know… you can be charming when you are not being a dungbrain," I said, before immediately regretting the words. It was too late to take them back, however, and they lingered in the air for a second as I inwardly cringed.

"And you can be funny when the joke is not about me," Gunther responded, sitting back in the poor old chair and raising an eyebrow.

Finally removed from the feeling of his breath so close to mine, the thudding anxiety lessened. After a moment, I shook my head and laughed, only a hint of shakiness tingeing the sound as the tension trickled from the room. "I never truly expected it to last a whole week," I confessed.

"Neither did I," Gunther admitted, leaning back in the seat to stretch. I could hear the satisfying cracks of limbs too long in one spot accompanying his movement, and pondered if he ever had these same thoughts of mouths brushing.

"I have been wanting to ask you something," I said after a minute of silence, casually plucking at a crumbled bit of plaster. I felt relieved at my ability to push away those kinds of thoughts of Gunther and return to my normal, sturdy self. Ideas like that meant nothing if they could be ignored, I decided. Besides, we already had a solid base for friendship, and I would not risk that for anything so silly when we had spent so many years as rivals. No one really _needs_ to know what it is like to kiss someone; even if it did sound a bit intriguing, and that someone's breath smelled faintly of honey from the morning's meal.

"Yes?"

"Well, without me the knights would still need a way to summon Dragon in an emergency – so my mother must have told you where she hid my sword?"

Gunther stared at me a moment before shaking his head, letting out an exasperated sigh, and scrubbing a callused fist across those high cheekbones. "Jane…"

"Please, Gunther. I have not even seen it for four days!"

He gave me a lukewarm glower and shook his head once more. "Jane, I am no fool –" he scowled somewhat at the word, pausing for a second, "and you know as much as anyone how I would hate to be washing clothes during the only months it is truly sunny."

"It would only be for a minute! I would feel safer knowing its whereabouts. Jester will not tell me where it is hidden, but I am sure he knows, and I am sure you know too."

Gunther sighed again and stood.

"You are leaving?" I demanded. "What about my sword?"

He rolled his eyes at me, and some inner part of me marveled once again at their changeling gray. "I am getting your sword, Jane. Calm down."

I instantly grinned. "Champion, Gunther, thank you!"

He let out another sigh, grumbling something under his breath as he walked to the other side of the room. I watched in confusion as he knelt in front of the hefty chest that held my clothes. Lifting the lid, which Jester had painted with the image of a flying dragon a few years before, he bent over it and began removing items. First he took out a few light sleeping shifts I wore during warmer weather, a bundle of winter wear, and several spare socks. Reaching deeper, he took out a chemise and an extra bra band, sending an immediate blush soaring across my face. I coughed uncomfortably. "Gunther, what exactly are you doing in there?"

"Just a moment…"

A second later he turned, loosely clasping my sword in one hand.

The shock dropped my mouth open, and for a bit I could only stare. "It has been in here the _whole time_?"

Gunther grinned, striding over the pile of clothes he had just deposited on the floor to hand me my sword. I grabbed it, sliding it out of the scabbard one-handed with a satisfying slither of metal. "How the saints could it have been in here without my knowing?" I exclaimed, running a thumb down the flat of the blade, following the curves of the dragon etched onto it. I glanced up at Gunther, still completely astonished.

His grin widened as he ran a hand through his hair. "I thought you would never ask me. I have heard you attack Jester nearly every day wanting to find it, but I knew the fool would never tell you."

"Well, I supposed Sir Theodore would have forbade you from telling me as well, so it seemed even less likely if I asked you!"

"Oh, Sir Theodore does not care one whit if you have your sword, he just does not want you trying to practice with it. Your mother is the one who enlisted Pepper and everyone else to keep it out of sight."

I could not stop myself from beaming at the weapon, my good hand curled tight around the hilt and the length of it lying on top of my legs. "It is silly to miss a sword, perhaps," I smiled, "but nonetheless true. Thank you, Gunther." I released my grip for a second to grasp his hand, turning my smile on him. He blinked, startled for a moment at my enthusiasm, but then squeezed my hand back. "However did it end up here and not somewhere more secret?" I wondered, returning my gaze to the gleam of the sharp dragonsteel.

"Well, we tried the weapons shed for an afternoon, but Dragon nearly knocked down the whole structure trying to remove it from our 'sneaky short-life hands', as he referred to them, so we agreed your room was the best spot."

I laughed a little, unsurprised Dragon was going around causing a ruckus without me. "But I know you hate doing laundry – my mother was serious about that, you know," I said, gently clicking the handle and opening the air compartment for summoning Dragon to verify no one had fiddled with it.

Gunther shrugged, sitting at the foot of the bed. "It will go right back in the chest with no one the wiser."

I grinned up at him. "You do have sneaky short-life hands."

He grinned as well, and we both sat there like fools, smiling at a piece of metal and at each other.

"Thank you," I said again, softer this time. "It means a lot to me, Gunther, that I can trust you with this."

"What, arming you while you are injured?" Gunther said, his voice lightly sardonic.

I shook my head, a trace of a smile remaining. "One must always be prepared, of course, but I simply meant understanding how important this is. My mother," I scowled the tiniest bit, holding the sword tighter than was completely necessary, "never understands."

"Neither does my father," Gunther muttered, so quietly it seemed perhaps I was not meant to hear.

There was much I wanted to say in response to that, but instead I forced my lips closed on all the gathering words welling in my throat. I had noticed his father was one of the few subjects that could still turn him ugly, draining all his recent kindness out as if he were a punctured sack of sand.

In the silence Gunther leaned his elbows on his knees and rested his chin upon his knuckles, glaring unseeing at my mantle and the many sentimental nothings it contained. After a moment he shifted and one hand dropped forward to grip the hard edge of my bed frame. I watched the way his skin tightened over the muscles in his arm as he absentmindedly grasped the wood tighter. Rising thick and hot from that same hidden place, I felt a sudden pressing desire to reach for that hand. I knew how warm it would feel, the way his calluses would brush against mine (which were many, though still lesser than his); I even knew the difference between our skin colors, and how my pale would make his faint tan look darker if our fingers entwined.

I swallowed back the ridiculous thoughts, vaguely disoriented at my own absurdity. Had I not just decided only minutes ago that friendship with Gunther was all I wanted?

Confused, I returned to examining my sword. I was hardly focused on the task at all, and eventually I glanced up, only to encounter Gunther's gaze. His eyes were dark, and though in the past few days I had gotten better at discovering his thoughts by means of facial expression, I found him unreadable.

"Well… I suppose the sword should probably go back in hiding," I said, my voice a slender wisp.

"Yes, of course." He rose, taking the scabbard from where it lay and handing it to me. Gently I slipped the blade in, feeling as if I were saying goodbye to a dear friend I may never see again. There was rustling as Gunther placed the sword back in its spot and heaped clothes on it once again, and then the strange hollow sound of the chest lid thumping shut.

I sighed.

"Are you tired?" Gunther asked, his voice soft and unobtrusive on my scattered thoughts.

"I – no, I am fine," I mumbled distractedly, blinking up at him.

"I will let you rest," Gunther murmured, brushing back hair the same shade as ink. "You ought to sleep, so you are ready to walk tomorrow."

I nodded. "I suppose you are right."

He gathered up the books from the day, haphazardly stacking them in his arms and opening the door at the same time. A chilly fall breeze blew in as he did so, and it occurred to me that it had become quite late; hours upon hours had passed since he entered that afternoon. I mentioned so inattentively, rubbing at the bandage beneath my father's nightshift as I once again noticed its itch. Somehow, when Gunther was right next to me, it never caught my attention.

"Pepper will come in with a tray soon," Gunther remarked in response, reminding me that I had spoken. His eyes were settled on the irate looking sky, the shades of the clouds and his eyes nearly an exact match.

"Just as well, I am starving," I grumbled, a companion grumble coming from my stomach. Embarrassed, I clapped a hand against it.

Gunther laughed, a small quick chuckle, his hand dipping into the bag hanging at his hip. Removing an apple, he tossed it to me.

"Your reflexes are the same as ever," he said, which I took to be a compliment considering I had caught the blushing fruit even with my less proficient left hand. Taking an unladylike sized chunk out of the apple with my teeth, I shivered at a gust of wind.

"Are you cold?" Gunther asked, pausing in the act of checking to see if he had everything he had come in with.

"Oh, only a tad," I tried to say around my mouthful, before thinking that perhaps there was a reason most girls ate apples by the slice – it was hardly attractive getting caught with some much in one's mouth at once.

Gunther raised his eyebrows, and after I shivered once more, set down the pile of heavy tomes. Or at least I had always considered them heavy – these days, he held them as if they were feathers. "I did not understand that in the slightest, Jane, but I will assume that you are." Stepping silently over the small mountain of books, he grabbed the blankets I had shoved completely off the bed and laid them back in place, folding the edges under.

I occurred to me that I was getting tucked in as if I were a child. It was a bit odd, and hardly necessary, and I said so.

"This is a bit odd, and hardly necessary."

"How so?"

"No one has done this for me for more years than I can remember, and after a few injuries everyone wants to. Sir Ivon tried to fluff my pillow the day before yesterday, and Jester keeps adding extra covers when I am distracted."

Gunther snorted. "You have successfully reminded them all that you are human."

"As opposed to what?" I uttered, still regretting the impossibility of crossing my arms and settling for a good glower as I set my half-eaten fruit on the bedside table. Though I was acting lighthearted about it, it still stunned me when Gunther did these things. Usually he hated when I mentioned it, becoming aloof and sometimes even cold, so I had put off trying to understand his kindness – but it still gave me pause.

"A dragon-riding she demon," Gunther smirked, placing my colorful quilt on top. I instantly fell victim to its warmth, and decided against whatever rude insult I had been planning.

"Oh, take yourself elsewhere," I groused, slipping down on the mattress and curling up beneath the many layers. "And thank you for the apple."

"You are welcome," he said, lightness in his voice as he turned to go.

"I simply would not have expected tucking-in from you, Gunther," I mumbled into my pillow, unable to prevent myself from mentioning it. After a long second I lifted my head to see him standing at the door, picking the books back up.

"I do not like it when you are cold," he said plainly, leaving no room for emotion as he unlatched my door for the second time. I was insulated from the blustery, foul-tempered air as he pulled it open, but it still traced cold designs on the exposed skin of my face. "Goodnight, Jane."

"Goodnight Gunther," I called after him, and I thought perhaps I saw him smile at me before the door slammed shut with the sound of finality.


	12. She Walks!

**Disclaimer:** Hmph. By now we gotta all know JatD isn't mine.

**Notes: **Woot! It's an update! I'm sorry this took a while, but I wrote it in a way that was a little weird for me. And that's because this chapter was written for Le soleil brille pas pour toi, (thank you!) who challenged me to use less narration! Now that I look over it, maybe I didn't really use less narration at all, only added more dialogue, which is sort of cheating. But I really tried to work on it, and it did feel a little uncomfortable, which just goes to show how awful I am at branching out! So, if anyone has any suggestions, please share them, because I really need the practice/challenge!

Going off that, I am not overly fond of this chapter, probably because I fought with it half the time (and had to stop myself from adding in more and more narrating details. Geez, it's like a disease. I had to post it or I would have gone on forever). Please tell me your opinion! I want to know if it even seems different to you guys at all, or if it did seem not as good (or better!). So, as always, please review, because they are my lifeblood and they always make my day! To everyone who reviewed for this past chapter or past many, I love you guys and you are the best. The support is the reason I keep on muddling through this story, which is now over three years old.

Finally, for anyone who doesn't check my chapter status thingy on my profile (or if I forgot to put this up there), this chapter was originally _way_ longer. It had about maybe ten extra pages worth of plot tacked on the end, because I really wanted to get this story rolling again - but it was just too long. Soooo, all my favorite parts were cut to go into the next chapter, which hopefully will be coming your way soon!

Enjoy! (And review.)

* * *

The next morning I took my first step in days. The ridiculous onlookers, who had crowded themselves into my room (quite without my consent, of course), gave a raucous cheer.

I glared at them all, but Pepper, Smithy, Gunther, Rake, Jester, my mother and father, as much of Dragon as could fit through the window, the princess, and Sir Ivon (Sir Theodore was consulting with the king on business) were not to be silenced. After a good few minutes of their preposterousness, they finally quieted down again. Taking several more steps, which were reassuringly steady (there really was nothing wrong with my legs, after all), I headed for the door. My supporters began to make noises of encouragement, sending advice my way about the process of walking and all its subtleties.

"I know how to walk, you lot!" I scowled. "Now clear off and let me out the door!"

"Pace yourself, dear…" my mother worried from over my father's shoulder.

"Ach, milady, the lass will be fine!" Ivon declared, clapping my father on his other shoulder as if I were a child taking her very first unsteady stride. Father flinched, the Knight's jovial thump a bit more jovial than had probably been intended.

I rolled my eyes and sidled around Jester to exit the room. It was a moment or two before everyone packed into my tower realized I was no longer in there with them, and then they came spilling out as I walked determinedly along the stone walkway. Dragon's smile as I came around the corner to him was blinding, and the forceful hug I gave his nose would have crushed his nasal cavity if he were not, well, a dragon.

"You look good, Jane," he said softly.

"I feel good," I said, just as quietly, my eyes closed as I felt the gentle warmth of his breath on my bandaged side. "You know what, Lizardlips?"

"Hmm?"

"I missed Dragon hugs more than I missed training."

"Oh, really? I missed Jane hugs more than I miss the cows when it rains…. They always go inside that little house. Is a bit of rain truly going to harm them?"

"Oh, Dragon," I sighed against his scales, running a hand over the smooth place where jawbone met neck.

"Oh, Jane," Dragon said, and it was a sweet twist of teasing and affection.

I pulled back to smile at him, and he grinned, flashing enough teeth to make even the fiercest barber faint. "Can we go flying yet?" he murmured, his tail twitching excitedly.

I sighed. "I do not think so," I mumbled. "Soon. With only one arm, I am not sure I could hold on well enough."

He nodded, and though his face instantly fell, his voice was a wonderqful attempt at cheerful. "I would not want for you to fall again."

"Indeed." I shuddered at the memory of tumbling towards the earth, the sickening green of the treetops beneath me.

"So where are you off to?" he wondered after a moment, giving me an endearing nudge with his oversized nose.

I smiled. "Training, of course!"

His scowl was immediate and menacing. "Absolutely not!"

I laughed. "The reading sort of training, Dragon. Not _real_ training, but better than nothing. I am to observe Gunther for a few hours a day and read several books on swordplay and archery and such."

Dragon paused and huffed out a little swirl of smoke, his eyes narrowed. "I suppose that is acceptable…"

"I should hope so! I am tired of doing nothing," I said, giving his scaly nose one last squeeze and turning towards the stairs down into the practice yard. After a moment, he padded along behind me.

"May I assist you, fair Jane?" Jester asked, stepping forward and offering an elbow.

I smiled at him and shook my head. "Thank you, but I will be fine without help, Jester."

He gave me a look, as did my mother from behind him.

"Truly!" I said, raising my eyebrows in a manner I hoped appeared reassuring. "See?" I took the first step down and stood there for a moment to prove how capable I was.

The spectators, including Dragon, still looked a tad suspicious, so I carefully placed my hand on the chilly stone wall and continued to the second and third. When no one protested, I went down the remaining steps, and my feet touched real earth for the first time in a week.

"A little unsteady on that last one, Jane," Jester called, and I heard a few grumbled agreements.

"You are imagining things!" I called, walking over to my designated chair and plopping down. "See? Very reasonable. Just sitting here calmly with my books." I looked around at the packed dirt beneath me, and then frowned. "Maggots, I forgot my books."

"Right here," Gunther murmured, and I glanced up to see him standing right next to me. Clasped in his hand were three books, and silently he passed them to me.

I smiled at him in thanks, and then scowled down at the tomes. "These must be the thinnest three books in the entire library!"

"Sir Ivon picked them for you," Gunther said with a trace of a smile.

"That mollycoddler," I grumbled, glaring at the old leather covers, embossed with uninteresting titles.

For the next few minutes people bustled around and repositioned themselves, Pepper hurrying off to the kitchen to begin preparations for dinner and Smithy taking up his hammer. Sir Ivon found a likely looking bale of hay from which he could pretend to pay attention to Gunther and me whilst actually taking a nap, and Dragon settled in on top of his wall, great green head draped over the side. My mother and father drifted back to their duties, taking the princess with them, assured that I would not be able to do anything mischievous with so many people watching.

"Off to your vegetables?" Jester called at the clack of Rake's shoes.

"They need tending!" Rake exclaimed as he turned the corner, on the way to his garden.

"Seems as if it is just you and me, Jane," Jester said, raising an eyebrow as he flicked a bell and leaned against the wall casually.

I nodded my head at Gunther, who had a not very pleasant expression on his face as he headed for the dummy, the sword in his left hand nearly strangled. "And Gunther, of course."

"Oh yes… Gunther. How could I forget?" Jester muttered.

I flipped open the topmost book, which covered the fundamentals of long-range weapons and arrow fletching. It proved to be dull, as did the next. There was no discussion of actual battles, simply the mechanics and structure of various knightly tools. It seemed a miracle to me that anything so fascinating as a weapon could be reduced to a few dry sentences, when I knew swords could swish through the air like lightning and axes could crash against shields with the force of a stampeding bull.

After my third or fourth sigh and far too much time, Jester spoke. "Something wrong, Jane?"

"Ugh. These books are boring me silly."

"Boring you more silly, you mean?"

I glowered, and he gave an apologetic smile. "Do forgive me, Jane. But you are not the only one with problems – I am afraid my current ballad is turning into a tragic mess."

"Oh? Let me hear it. Perhaps I can help," I said, leaning on the pile of books in my lap and finding them rather comfortable. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Gunther give the dummy wallop after wallop, his face rather sour and his movements more skilled than I could have imagined after barely a week of left-handed training. Watching the mace ball spin around, pushed quicker with each of his jabs, I wondered with a sick feeling if anyone had yet cleaned my blood from its spikes.

"Well, it begins like this –

_There once was a lady braver than fire_

_To be a warrior was her true desire_

_Well, she adventured, she fought, and she roamed_

_And finally returned to her lovers back home_

_One had loved her since the dawn of time,_

_His love filled with music, poetry and rhyme_

_To her he offered his songs and his heart_

_Hoping for her to be struck by Cupid's dart_

_But the other lover was cruel and cold_

_A warrior like she, fierce and bold _

_He gave her nothing but sorrow and pain_

_Yet she came back to him again and again_

_Now this lady brave had to choose one of the two_

_Her heart torn apart, she knew not what to do_

_So when came the final hour,_

_She chose –_"

Jester paused, halting the lilt of his song at its climax. "I do not know how to finish it."

"It is not a tragic mess at all, Jester, it is lovely," I said with an encouraging grin. "But should it not be obvious –"

"Who she chooses?" Jester eagerly interrupted, his eyes on my face.

I frowned thoughtfully, glancing down at a book on the techniques of left-handed weaponry, pinned open by my elbow. "No, not that. I meant how hard it will be to rhyme with 'hour'. There is 'bower' and 'flower', and 'cower' and 'power' – but none of those really make much sense. If you changed that word, I think it would come together better. It really is beautiful so far, though."

Jester looked strangely disappointed, and his thin fingers tapped the lute strings in an impatient manner. "Whom do you think she should choose?" he persisted after a moment.

"Well, I am not her, Jester," I responded, turning a few pages absentmindedly. "The first lover sounds kind, but there must be a reason she keeps coming back to the other."

Jester looked less than satisfied with my answer, so I smiled up at him and patted his arm. "It is your ballad; it is your decision whom she chooses."

Jester shook his head and opened his mouth to speak, but behind him I could see Gunther pull back his sword, spin it from one hand to the other, and bring it down forcefully upon the dummy. I rose in my seat, my mouth falling open as I shook Jester's shoulder.

"Did you see that?!" I blurted, watching the mace ball arm fall to the ground with a dull thud, disconnected from its cloth host.

"What?"

I gestured wildly at Gunther. "That was a Parallel Lightning Strike! It is all right here –" I held up the book I had just been skimming and waved it in Jester's face, "see? It requires perfect balance for the sword to pass to the next hand, as it is moving so quickly it could easily chop off fingers if it is ill timed or not in the correct position. Champion job, Gunther!" I yelled to him.

He turned from where he faced the now one-armed dummy, and as he saw me, paused for a moment stony-faced. His eyes flicked between where Jester clutched his lute looking annoyed and where I stood a few steps forward, still holding up the book, my expression one of astonishment. A small, mildly smug smile emerged on his face, and he nodded at me before turning back to his injured foe.

"That was amazing! How did he learn that?" I said aside to Jester, my mind tracing the movement over and over as I continued to stare at Gunther, finally sinking back into my seat.

Jester shrugged. My eyes followed Gunther for a few moments more, and then I returned to my reading, though I could hardly focus on it. I was still replaying the motion in my head, my fingers itching to touch something sharper than a book.

"Do you find it strange how friendly Gunther has been lately?" Jester asked casually after a few minutes.

I shrugged one shoulder distractedly. "I think it is a nice change." Once again bored by the dry descriptions, I glanced up to where Dragon lounged, and grinned. "Look, the great lout is asleep. His snores will rival Sir Ivon's."

Jester nodded absently, as if he had not truly heard, and gazed uncertainly out at Gunther.

…

The next few days and weeks passed quite similarly, and the reading became even less engaging. I was permitted to walk around and use my left arm, and I took advantage of both mightily by brushing each of the stabled horses until they gleamed. Previously never too fond of me due to my reek of dragonsmoke, the steeds and workhorses decided I was well enough after lavishing so much attention on them. However, when Smithy teased that I would rub their coats bald, I put the brush down and instead took to pacing around the practice yard.

After I once again refused to decide which lover for Jester's ballad, he stopped working on it, saying with a sigh that it would decide for itself given enough time. With no songs to work on, he found himself much more occupied taking care of the royal children, and was often not there. Most afternoons Gunther, Dragon and I were the only ones in the yard, with Smithy banging away in the corner. I settled into a habit of wandering circles around Gunther as he fought the dummy or Sir Ivon, a bit jealous of his swift improvement at fighting left-handed but also interested to see how it worked. I fired questions at him as I went, wondering how each body part should be positioned or when to use what move.

"Does this irritate you?" I asked one day, trotting around the back of the archery target.

"What?" Gunther wondered, brushing sweat and inky hair from his forehead.

"All these questions."

"A little," he answered, ducking to avoid the dummy's mace, which Smithy had reattached.

"Oh," I said.

"But I understand why." He stabbed the dummy in the spot where a much younger Lavinia had once painted a heart, and straightened. "It is challenging for you to sit and do nothing."

"Is that a question?"

"No. I have known you for a long time, Jane. You have always been terrible at doing nothing."

I glared at him, wishing once again I had the capability to cross my arms. "You are too."

He shrugged lazily, and I thought of all the times I had watched his busy hands tap on a table or fold the corner of a page over and over again.

"Doing nothing is stupid," I said after a while, frowning at the dusty earth on my shoes. "I could at least cut some vegetables, or write some reports, or… well, anything. It would not be hard to do more than I am doing."

"You are spending quality time watching a master at work," Gunther said conceitedly, relieving the dummy of the extra fluff and fabric hanging around its stomach with a few quick chops.

"Oh, you are being absurd," I snapped, my good hand on my hip. "If I were only allowed to hold a sword, I am sure I would do equally as well."

Gunther raised an impertinent eyebrow.

"Truly!" I protested, irritation gathering in my voice. "Here, pass me my practice sword."

"I do not think so," Gunther responded warily, glancing down at the wooden sword by his feet.

"I will show you!" I said, striding forward determinedly.

Gunther scowled at me, his eyes narrowing. "That is a terrible idea."

"Well, Sir Theodore is in the library, Dragon is out eating, Smithy is fetching supplies, and Sir Ivon is going to the privy – you know how long that takes. No one will see!" I exclaimed, leaning down for the rough-cut weapon.

Gunther immediately flicked the sword up with his boot, catching it in a single fluid movement and holding it behind his back. "It has nothing to do with who sees, Jane," he uttered exasperatedly as I advanced on him. "The point is you should not even be handling any sort of weapon right now."

I tried to reach around his back and grab for the splintery wood, but he caught my wrist with rough fingers. "_For your own good_, Jane."

I glared up at him, trying to tug my wrist away from his cage of a hand. "I hate doing things for my own good. Let go!"

"No one cares if you hate it!" he stated hotly. "You cannot always do things for someone else; sometimes you have to do them for yourself. I am only letting go if you promise not to pick up a weapon until your arm is out of its sling."

I shook my head, trying to ignore how the sun found the silver in his eyes. "Absolutely not! What if something happens and I need to defend someone before then? I can hardly promise something like that."

We stood there for a moment, looking stubbornly at each other. I was uncomfortably conscious of how my arm was wrapped halfway around him, and how close our bodies were. It seemed as if we ended up like this strangely often, only a hand's length apart, both breathing far too hard. My heart appeared to be pounding in every part of me except for where it should have been in some odd, nervous rhythm, and I was close enough to see the darker, nearly black smudges within his irises. There was a smear of dirt on his left cheekbone, covering a bit of a flush, and I wanted nothing more than to lift a hand and brush it off with my thumb. I could not help but wonder what he thought of when we were so close.

"Fine," he muttered finally. "I will not ask you to promise that."

"Thank you," I murmured softly, but his grip did not loosen on my wrist.

"I will ask you not to, though," he said gruffly. "If you will not do it for yourself, then find someone else to do it for. I cannot think of anything more ridiculous than having to chase you around like some nursemaid, making sure you are not practicing while injured."

I paused, and my voice was quiet when I replied. "You could just let me hurt myself, you know."

He gave me a look, as if I had never said anything less intelligent. "Ha. You would not be hurting only yourself, Jane."

I swallowed, my eyes searching his, unsure of how to untangle the ambiguity of his statement. I could feel the warmth of his fingers on the sensitive skin of my wrist, and it seemed as if surely he could feel how fast my pulse was.

Abruptly, from behind the stable doors, I heard the shuffle marking Sir Ivon's footsteps. Gunther dropped both my wrist and the practice sword behind his back in the same instant.

"Squires," Sir Ivon said, nodding at us as he turned the corner.

We dipped our heads in response, and as he thudded up the creaky steps to the knight's quarters, Gunther glanced at me. "Well?" he whispered meaningfully.

"Well what?" I whispered back, heart thumping insistently.

"Will you agree not to practice in any way until your arm is healed?" he muttered, turning his head back to Sir Ivon.

Both our eyes following the stout knight, I let out a soft sigh. "I will never catch up."

"I will help you," he said distractedly, crouching to snatch the wooden sword from the dry ground as he watched the door to the quarters slam shut.

"…You will?" I asked.

He straightened, and it brought him right back where he had been before, only a breath away. "Of course," he said eventually, so close I could feel his words on my cheek. "Practice is boring without you."

"But I am right here," I responded, confused.

He rolled his beautiful eyes. "Yes, irritated and miserable. I meant when you are actually able to fight."

"Oh." I got a pleasant little tickle inside, thinking of Gunther missing our spars as much as I did. I never would have guessed it would happen for either of us – we both acted as if they were such a chore. However, just as it happened with Dragon flights, only once they were no longer possible did I realize how empty a day felt without them.

"Besides," he smirked, "I need a small amount of competition. If you are not up to it, I will have to train you to have, at the very least, a tiny bit of the talent I possess."

I glared, feeling much less fuzzy on the inside, as if whatever happened when our eyes caught had swiftly had all the air run out of it. "You beef-brain!" I retorted. To emphasize the statement, I shoved him with my good arm, my palm encountering the unyielding muscle of his stomach.

Unfortunately, he did not budge, and instead simply grinned. "You are far too easy to tease, Jane," he said wickedly, poking my good shoulder. "Why did you think I always tried to?"

Sending a scowl up at him, I shrugged. "I was convinced it was because you were a donkey." Are a donkey.

He laughed, and, as always, it surprised me. I tried to figure when exactly he had stopped with those gloating snickers, but had only in my head the deep, rumbling sound he made now. It occurred to me that Gunther had the laugh of a man, and I thought, a touch uncomfortably, of my snorts. I had hoped they were simply a childhood habit, but still, they continued.

"You are only not saying worse because of the truce," Gunther said, his words layered with amusement as he moved away to absently smack the dummy.

I gave him another dark look, because it was true and he knew it, pushing my load of hair out of my face. It was growing far too long to leave blowing around all the time; I was overdue for a date with Pepper's scissors. Tugging at an errant curl, I watched him strike lazily at the dummy, his sword catching the weak rays of a rapidly sinking November sun.

"Well?" he said again, after a while.

I sighed. "You will help me catch up?" I asked. I tried to make it sound as if the question meant nothing – but it left my tongue a bit tentative. I hated asking him for things, even after weeks of people offering me help. My wounds did not hurt at all any longer, not even when I bent or twisted, but it seemed that everyone in the Castle loved acting as if they did. Pepper still piled extra food on my plate, giving me a stern look if I protested, and Jester would carry or fetch anything my heart desired, especially if I desired nothing. Gunther was not so ridiculous, and it was only moments when I caught my breath after climbing the stairs, or winced at something jerking my arm, that he mentioned it. But when he did, his voice was concerned, and he would brush the hand clasped to my side or arm as if coaxing it to release its grip. I never said to him how unlike him it was to do such things. I told myself it was because he would not take it well, but, truly, some part of me was secretly worried he would stop doing them if I did.

"If you say you will not practice until your arm is healed, yes." He ran a dirty hand through his hair, still poking the dummy's shoulder so it continued to spin listlessly.

"Fine," I answered, my mouth twisting a little. I knew it was practical, but I could still picture how clumsy I would be in a month or so when the cast came off. "I will not practice."

"Champion," he said, increasing the speed of the dummy's rotations with harder and harder jabs as I picked at a loose string of canvas on my cast. "I doubt you will need much help, though. You always pick sword techniques up quickly."

I paused at the praise, glancing at him in the fading light. It still surprised me, but it was becoming easier to take it breezily, as if it was perfectly normal for both of us to be kind to each other. It was not so far from normal now, truth be told. Gunther sat with us at meals, laughed on occasion, even helped if Pepper wheedled enough. However, Jester and him still constantly disagreed, and frequently glared at each other across the table. That, I still did not understand, as Smithy and him appeared to be getting along rather well, and even Rake gave him cautious smiles. I could hardly believe I had ever doubted this truce.

"As you do, with archery," I said to him as lightly as I could, my eyes following the dummy's gyrations.

"Well." His voice was casual as he broke the poor thing's twine seam with a flick of his blade. "Once the cast is off, I could give you an archery lesson."

"Truly?" I questioned, looking away from where the fluff begin to migrate out of the gap, and up at him. It was getting too dark to be fighting, and his face was clothed in shadow.

He nodded, moving away from his holey opponent and taking a swig from a water pitcher set on a nearby barrel. "I know it has always bothered you that it does not come as naturally as fighting with a sword."

"How did you know that?" I wondered, reaching for the same pitcher and sipping.

His brow furrowed as he took the water jug back and swallowed half its volume in one gulp. "Jane, we have spent nearly every day together for more than five years. What did you expect, that I would be an unobservant clod?"

I opened my mouth, and then closed it again.

"Obviously so," he muttered, finishing the water and placing the clay pitcher back on the barrel.

I scowled, feeling vaguely guilty. "Well, I never wanted to expect anything from you," I replied grumpily, taking a roll from next to the empty jug and nibbling on it.

"Because you thought I would disappoint you." His mouth quirked bitterly.

"I simply – tried not to. That way, I would not be disappointed, but I would also be surprised if you did something, well –"

"Right? For once?" His voice was cynical as he too grabbed a roll.

I glowered at my stale bread, then at him. The truce by no means meant it was always laughter and sunshine between us. After all, I was still me, and he was still Gunther, and we would never get along perfectly.

"Then what have you noticed about me, Jane?" he asked, watching me, his fingers picking little holes in the bread. "You had the same amount of time I did."

I huffed out an irritated breath. "I do not think you actually want me to say."

"Humor me," he said carelessly, tossing his slightly mangled roll and catching it.

I was sure we had already had a similar conversation, one in which I tiptoed around my thoughts of him, but his eyes were scrutinizing on my face as he waited for me to speak. "Well… what I have already said. You have a wall to hide everything real behind."

Gunther shook his head. "No, those are conclusions. What are your observations?"

There was a pause.

"You favor your right side," I said, swallowing a bite of bread.

"And?" he asked.

"You have a hard time separating false distractions from true ones," I continued, looking over his shoulder. After a moment, he turned to look as well, and I smiled. "You are naturally talented as an archer, but you focus on it too much. Your skill with the sword pays the price, and your work with the dagger even more so." I ripped off part of the roll's crust, balling it up in my fist. "You always pay attention to something coming at your face before something heading towards your more vital areas." I threw the small, yeasty sphere at him, and it hit right where his heart was. "But your footwork is impressive." I stepped forward, and he immediately countered my movement. "You are not as quick as I am," I slipped past to stand behind him, "though quick enough. How are my observations?"

He turned to face me, raising an eyebrow. "I was thinking you would refuse to respond. I should have known better."

I grinned, tilting my head. "Truce or not, I will always love putting you in your place, Gunther Breech."

He smiled as well, the corner of his mouth inching up a bit darkly. "Of course." He took an unseemly-sized mouthful of roll, finishing it off all at once.

"In five years you must have noticed more than my lack of skill with archery," I mentioned after a moment. "What else was there?" This conversation seemed to be heading down a slightly dangerous route, as we were both rather prideful and discussing flaws is often a bad idea in that case, but I had to admit I was beginning to enjoy it anyways. Sometimes talking with Gunther felt easy and pleasant, but occasionally it felt we were dancing on the edge of a knife between teasing and insults. However, despite that, I was coming to relish speaking with him either way.

Gunther swallowed his bread, eyes catching mine as he began to speak. "You are quick, as you said." He reached for me, and I instantly shifted back, his hands encountering only air. "And your footwork has always been good." He took a step towards me, and, as if we were dancing, I matched his steps in the opposite direction. "I had to work to be able to move like that," he confessed. Darting forward, he plucked me off the ground, as one grabs children or particularly light brides, his arms tight. "But you are not nearly so strong as a boy, and you never will be," he whispered into my ear with a quick rush of warm breath, depositing me a meter or so away from where I had started. I gave him a dirty look while attempting to fix the mussed tangle of curls that had fallen in my eyes, trying to ignore my racing heart. "Your skill as a swordsman is damaged by your inability to fight with heavier weapons," he continued, brushing stray hairs from his face, gray eyes gleaming in the last light of the sunset. "You could never wield a mace or axe with the amount of force necessary." I glanced up at him as he walked forward once more, his steps the beginning movements of a popular dance, one of the first Kippernian children ever learned. Unconsciously I followed his tread, and he bowed as I curtsied. He smiled faintly. "Your archery is atrocious most days, though I have seen it decent. You let it depend too much on your perception of how far away the target is, and not enough on visualizing where the arrow should go." We both moved back, dipped, and went towards each other again, circling in the falling dark. "You have a tendency to go on the defensive, perhaps because it requires less brute force–" automatically I raised my hand as we both stepped with our left feet, and his palm came to meet mine, "–though it may be because you do not like to make the killing move. You would rather get your opponent in a position to yield." We turned around and around each other, hand resting against hand, my eyes glued to his. "I never could figure out which reason it was," he said. "Perhaps both." His palm was warm and sure on mine as my feet moved with his through the steps. Our circles tightened, until I was close enough to see, even in the near darkness, that same dirt smear on his cheekbone from before, close enough to see myself reflected in his eyes, to feel the warmth of his body in the first pinch of night air. I noticed how fluttery my breath was, strange and fast and shallow, and then –

"You loonies!" Dragon's roar was boisterous as he crashed into the wall. "There is not even any music! Short-life dancing confuses me to no end."

I moved back, my heart beating wildly, a thousand confusing sentences on my tongue, and smiled awkwardly at Gunther. "I should go," I murmured, fingers still held in his. "My mother wanted me to join her and Father for supper tonight." My words came out throaty and slightly nervous, and his skin suddenly seemed the warmest thing in the world to me.

He nodded, stepping away as both our hands dropped. I immediately clenched mine at my side, a touch of his heat held inside.

"Have a nice evening," he said, sounding husky, looking down at me.

"You too," I replied softly.

He nodded once again, his eyes implacably dark, and I turned to walk up the stairs to my tower. My footsteps were not entirely steady, and I felt as if I had missed some moment I never even knew was there. Halfway up the steps, my feet paused. "I will remember that archery lesson," I called down to him.

He waved a hand at me, but I could not see his face in the gathering dark. I stared down for a second before continuing up, noticing my left hand was filthy, as his had been from practice. I glanced at it, curling my fingers with a hint of a smile. I knew I needed to change out of my practice tunic and brush my hair, but I was hardly able to focus on the thought.


End file.
